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Cycle Tours / Re: Hokkaido, Japan
« Last post by Andre Jute on January 13, 2026, 04:00:04 PM »Ron S plays the Hollywood Dome! Marvelous photo.
That's a spectacular crane. We have cranes too*, descendants of a female I captured decades ago on a different part of the river where she was likely to starve if she didn't first feature as dinner for the fox family that lived in the lawyer's arboretum perhaps fifty paces away with his private bridge pointing straight from their cave to the crane's perch, hurriedly (it's a dangerous predator which ruined the winter-weight pigskin gloves I wore though the thick knitted wool lining saved my fingers) stuffed in a doctors's Gladstone that I repurposed as a rack bag, and released it at the salmon stairs where there is a bedrock island that would offer her relative safety from foxes and a rogue mink (Siberian, some idiot thought it could be a pet, and let it escape, and 20-some years later did it again; what a moron) which had already killed one of a pair of swan. That first crane's descendants have since colonized the river and all its tributaries. (Interestingly, the ever-more error-prone BBC put out a documentary on the "Return of the Cranes to Ireland after 300 years", I kid you nor. Nope, I didn't import our tourist attraction, I found it, already here, and a mate found her here, about a hundred paces from my front door, within the month.) But these cranes are Common Greys, not quite dull but certainly well camouflaged, not nearly as spectacular as your Hokkaido Red Crest. They likely share a common mainland Asian ancestry, as the Common Grey was introduced from Asia and has a red bald patch on its head, not a crest.
* Not to mention that my cross frame bike is a Kranich, which is German for crane.
That's a spectacular crane. We have cranes too*, descendants of a female I captured decades ago on a different part of the river where she was likely to starve if she didn't first feature as dinner for the fox family that lived in the lawyer's arboretum perhaps fifty paces away with his private bridge pointing straight from their cave to the crane's perch, hurriedly (it's a dangerous predator which ruined the winter-weight pigskin gloves I wore though the thick knitted wool lining saved my fingers) stuffed in a doctors's Gladstone that I repurposed as a rack bag, and released it at the salmon stairs where there is a bedrock island that would offer her relative safety from foxes and a rogue mink (Siberian, some idiot thought it could be a pet, and let it escape, and 20-some years later did it again; what a moron) which had already killed one of a pair of swan. That first crane's descendants have since colonized the river and all its tributaries. (Interestingly, the ever-more error-prone BBC put out a documentary on the "Return of the Cranes to Ireland after 300 years", I kid you nor. Nope, I didn't import our tourist attraction, I found it, already here, and a mate found her here, about a hundred paces from my front door, within the month.) But these cranes are Common Greys, not quite dull but certainly well camouflaged, not nearly as spectacular as your Hokkaido Red Crest. They likely share a common mainland Asian ancestry, as the Common Grey was introduced from Asia and has a red bald patch on its head, not a crest.
* Not to mention that my cross frame bike is a Kranich, which is German for crane.
