Hokkaido Wildlife Photo Workshop Tour - Dragons and the World of the Samurai

I am currently leading my annual Hokkaido photo workshop which includes Mt. Fuji, Snow Monkey park, investigating the World of the Samurai, and birding in Hokkaido featuring several of Hokkaido’s bountiful avian wildlife.  The popularity of birding in Japan has only increased recently among international photographers, especially with some of the covid restrictions finally easing.  In Japan there are over 600 bird species recorded, over 60% of these are migratory.  Species that are either endemic or sub-regional endemic include the Blakiston’s Fish-owl (Bubo blakistoni), the Red-Crowned crane (Grus japonensis), Pyer’s Woodpecker (Yungipicus kizuki), Japanese White-eye (Zosterops japonicus), Black Kite (Milvus migrans), and there are over 60 species in this category. Japan is latitudinally long at over 3,000 kilometers, located in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, climates range from subarctic condition in the north, to subtropical in the south. There are two distinct ecological lines dividing Japan’s natural indigenous plant and animal life. “The Blakiston’s Line” and the “Watase’s Line.”  Due to this uniquely rare ecological condition, Japan is avifauna abundantly rich, making it the perfect location for wildlife and wildlife photographers.

During our photo workshop we will be spotting and photographing Steller’s Sea Eagles (Haliaeetus pelagicus) and other raptors next week plus the Red-Crowned Cranes (Grus japonensis), and the largest herd of Sika Deer (Cervus nippon yesoensis) on the planet.  Now we are walking the same ancient Shinto pilgrimage route that infamous samurai such as shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Takeda Shingen, and Uesugi Kenshin sought out hundreds of year before.  In the morning, we happened upon a nearly lifelike dragon statue that also happens to be a national treasure, and this statue was emanating so much raw power that we felt if we returned to the same location in the evening, and we didn’t see the dragon, it would be patrolling its domain.  Or perhaps the dragon is taking a swim or resting in the hot springs in the nearby lake replenishing its energies to welcome other pilgrims.