Tuesday, June 10 – Our last ocean cruise

 

Taking off in the fog

Spectacled Guillemots with red legs

Fog greeted us this morning.  After a bowl of mutton and cabbage soup I joined the others with our luggage and we set off in the three vans for the harbor, stopping at a 7-11 to pick up our lunches.  Our naturalist who guided us yesterday was there to meet us as we climbed on our boat for our last pelagic trip.   It was quite foggy, and we soon entered zero visibility and motored along in cold fog for an hour.  Suddenly it partially cleared, and we found ourselves moving around the bird-covered islands that we had seen yesterday.  Several Sea Otters were swimming offshore and we got good sightings of Spectacled Guillemots splashing about with their bright red legs.

We returned to the pier at 11:30 and set off, eating our lunches, sour plum-filled Onigiri (rice pressed into a triangular shape and wrapped in Nori) for me that I’ve become quite fond of. 

We turned inland, driving past vast hay fields for an hour or so, finally turning into our rural hotel, Yuyado Daiichi, a very fancy onsen resort.  We not only removed our shoes and put them in cubbies before entering, but the staff also cleaned off our suitcase wheels which makes sense if you’re going to go to all the trouble of not contaminating the inside floors with outside shoes.  

Our hotel lobby and birdwatching station

The beautiful hotel lobby overlooks a stream and patch of woods and has huge windows with chairs facing them as one of the main attractions here is the ability to see the very rare Blakiston’s Fish-Owl!   It is generally regarded as the largest owl species in the world, although there is some debate about which dimension determines "largest."  There are only 100 pairs left in Japan.  The hotel puts out some fish every evening and most nights the male comes by for a snack.  This male is very old; his current mate is very shy and never comes to the feeding perch.  

Our river-view room with lounge chairs & tatami mat

Our room is very beautiful, overlooking a running stream, with western style beds and a tatami area with futons available if one prefers to sleep on them.   Ironically the fancier the hotel, the more inconvenient the rooms are, for us, at least!  We have very comfortable lounge chairs overlooking the stream, but no desk to write my blog on (this place is strictly for relaxation, not work)  A sink room and a toilet room, but no shower as bathing is supposed to take place in the onsen room way down the hall.

We assembled in the lobby at 6 PM for a bird walk around the grounds and got good sightings of the Eurasian Woodcock flying the perimeter of his territory as they do every evening.

Raw prawn on rice with decorative nori

Custard with crab leg

We entered our private dining room at 7:30 and receive our menus, in Japanese, which listed 15 courses!  Many of those are just tiny bites of special vegetables like fiddleneck ferns, or a bit of fish with some roe on top, and another was a dish of lovely custard with a crab leg inside, or a whole fish!    One of us has Google Translate and helped us with the menu.

   

  We sat and watched for the owl until 11 PM and then gave up and went to bed.   At 11:30 we received a phone call that the owl had arrived! I put my Yukata on over my PJs (so great to not have to get dressed!) and dashed downstairs with Bob and there on the perch was an enormous owl calmly eating a fish!  He turned around a fluffed out his rear feathers – a huge mass of down!   He hung around for about ten minutes and then left.   So glad we have checked him off the list…and don’t have to stay up tomorrow!

Blakiston’s Fish-Owl with fish