I heard him before I saw him – the great spotted woodpecker

My main objective coming to Hokkaido was to photograph the red-crowned crane. Sometimes the weather doesn’t always cooperate and we had a really overcast day so I decided to tour the island. One of the wildlife hot spots is near Nemuro at Lake Furen. In the winter, you can see stellar sea eagles and whooper swans. I stopped to lookout my map when I started to hear a hollow tapping sound. I looked and near eye-level was a great spotted woodpecker. This is a new bird for me and he cooperated working his way up a tree then hopping to the next.

Taken with the Nikon D5 and Nikkor 500mm PF with 1.4 teleconverter. I got my 500mm PF expedited thanks to Nikon NPS and Bedford Camera.