Botanic Garden 2021

Is been raining and or cloudy in most day lately. Not surprisingly that this monitor lizard climbing high up the tree hope to catch maximum sunlight to bring up his body temperature in this not so hot morning.

Tailor bird is one of the smaller bird but with the loudest call. You can hear them miles away, but to look for them is another story all together. They hardly perch at one spot for more than few seconds. 

Lineated Barbet is another bird that can be heard from far and often hard to spot them due to their well camouflaged colour.

Compare to Lineated Barbet, Black-Naped Oriole is much easier to spot due to their very bright yellow colour.

A Blue-Crowned Hanging Parrot perching high up the fronds of the palm tree.

Not far from the parrot is a Yellow-Vented Bulbul.

Pink Necked Green pigeon

This Asian Brown Flycatcher will probably stay for another one or two months before fly north back to their breeding ground.

Plantain squirrel is one of the small animals that you will never missed in SBG.

Olive-Backed Sunbird taking a break after feeding. 

Just managed to have a glimpse of this Red Legged Crake before disappearing into the heavy undergrowth.

 

Happiness Tree

Chance upon a fruiting tree while having my cycling trip. After checking with my friend, was told this is a Happiness Tree.

The fruit is in green colour when it is not ripe.

This fruit started to turn orange in colour.

From far this fruit really looks like oranges.

The shape looks like a persimmon too.

After searching online and I am still not sure why this tree is called Happiness Tree.

When cut opened the fruit, is really look like persimmon.

There is only one seed in this fruit. 

This tree also known as Fuguki tree (Garcinia subelliptica). There are a lot of heritage trees in Ryukyu Islands of  Japan planted some 300 years ago. This species has gained popularity as an ornamental tree for landscaping roadsides and gardens. It must also be an important food source for mammals and insects.

Winter Garden Bird of Hokkaido

Took me longer time than usual to record my this Hokkaido trip... was told that snow has started in Hokkaido last night. I better finish of my last post on Hokkaido.

I place all the common birds that I seen in the garden around Tomakomai in this post. I visited several garden over 3 days and these are the most common birds there in the garden.

I will start with the big bird! I was lucky enough to see this large Black Woodpecker in winter.

Slightly smaller than the Black woodpecker, I was equally thrilled by this Great Spotted Woodpecker.

The first time I seen this Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker was more than a decade ago when I first visited Japan. Is good to see a familiar one.

We don't get to see all the cute flying squirrel during winter except this Eurasian red squirrel.

Japanese Tit aka Eastern Great Tit that usually flew in flock together with Willow & Marsh Tit.

I prefer Varied Tit more may be due to the more colourful appearance.

Not difficult to spot an Eurasian Treecreeper.

Another bird that you will not missed is this Eurasian Nuthatch.

I seen this Eurasian Wren before during my trip to Netherlands. Same bird but now with snow as background.

Dusky Thrush foraging for food in the snow.

Another Grey Heron that has adapted to stay during winter here in Hokkaido.

Common Goldeneye can be seen swimming in the lake.

A pair of Greater Scaup swimming side by side.

The most common duck in the garden is Mallard.

Winter is coming again soon and have no idea when we are able to travel again. Hope to be able to travel again soon.