Miyajima Numa

Our big adventure yesterday was birdwatching and photography at Miyajima Numa near Bibai.  We packed up our stuff the night before so we could just drink coffee and head out early Saturday morning.  Ted had been there once before when he first came to Hokkaido, but that trip was with someone else before I came to Japan and before he had the car. His memory and the GPS got us there in a little under an hour and we didn’t get lost.

Miyajima Numa is a wetland area with a bog pool created by underground water and rainwater. It was designated a bird sanctuary in 1989 and is known as a stopping place for the white fronted goose, swans, and other wild birds.

Well, I have to say, it was fun but it wasn’t as fun as I thought it was going to be. Ted would say it was more fun than he thought it was going to be. It was very early, very cold, and snowing.  I took some pictures of some swans that were pretty far away and we had a nice view of the mountains. 

 

 

 

Most of the area was frozen except for where the birds were hanging out.  The middle frozen area had a lot of bird poop.  Maybe that was the birds’ way of keeping people from walking across to where they hang out.

 

After a while, I went back to the car.  Ted stayed, with his chair, tripods and forty-eleven cameras and lenses and took over 1000 pictures. (The number of cameras and lenses might be an exaggeration, but the number of pictures he took was not.)

 

This is one of Ted's photos

I stitched in the car for a couple of hours and made a little progress on the mystery bag.

 

Ted was the only person taking pictures and I was the only one in the parking lot. After a while, a goat came to the parking lot. I was about to get out of the car to pet it but it saw me and wandered away. It’s a good thing I took some pictures because I don’t think Ted would have believed me otherwise. I’ve not seen another goat in Hokkaido, so I don’t know if Japanese goats are any different from American goats, but this one was pretty big so I think it must be an American goat.  Surely, Japanese goats are slimmer.

 

When Ted came back to the car, we walked over to the Visitor’s Center (where you have to take off your boots to go inside) and back outside to see a shelter for taking photos.

 

We were back home before it was even lunch time, although it felt like we were gone for a whole day. Ted took some really good photos and put a few of them up on his Facebook page.

Here are a few birdwatching photos I took from the apartment. Ted made this wood pineapple holder, so the birds won’t knock the pineapple peeling over the edge.