Photographing Tancho (丹頂) in Hokkaido
In the Snow
Since 2018, when I was in England for the British Birdwatching Fair in Rutland and picked up a wildlife photography travel brochure, I wanted to go to Hokkaido, Japan. More specifically, I wanted to go there in winter and photograph Japanese Cranes, and (hopefully) Stellar’s Sea-Eagles.
The following year, I went to Japan. It was a spur of the moment trip that I took with my son, solely to take advantage of a flash airfare sale put on by Qantas. It was amazing, and I had a great time. But it wasn’t to Hokkaido, and it wasn’t in Winter!
It was before Covid-19, though, and as we all know, there was not much going on when that reared its ugly (and infectious) head.
The 2019 trip was a great two-week introduction to the country; the culture, the people, the food, and the wildlife - they were all amazing!
Here are some pics from that trip…
Okay, let’s fast-forward to 2026!
In 2025, my children and their partners started planning a trip to Japan for early 2026, and had a visit Sapporo (Hokkaido) in their itinerary. They asked me if I wanted to tag along, and I jumped at it!
They headed off a week or so before I did (I wanted to stay in Australia for my mum’s birthday), and I flew out on 29th January. I landed in Tokyo that night, and headed straight up to Naka Karuizawa the following morning. I wanted to re-visit the Karuizawa National Wild Bird Sanctuary Forest. I went there in 2019, and loved it, although it was to be a very different, and much colder, place in winter. It was still so wonderful though.
The following day the rest of the gang turned up with the car, and we started our journey north together - towards Hokkaido.
My younger daughter is putting together some family travel videos on the trip, so I’ll let her tell that side of the adventure (link below if you are keen to see lots of snowball fights, people eating food, and snippets of me muddling up my Japanese, drinking too much coffee, and falling over on some slippery steps), while I jump straight to the birdie bits…
We arrived in Hakodate, Hokkaido on the 6th February, and spent the following four days together in Sapporo (Hokkaido’s capital city), checking out this popular tourism city. The Winter Festival was in full swing, and the city was absolutely pumping with people.
After my daughters and their partners headed back to Tokyo, my son (Tom) and I hired a four-wheel-drive, and headed east to Kushiro. Within two days we were in Tsurui Village.
Tsurui Village is in eastern Hokkaido, and is surrounded by the Kushiro Wetlands. Tsurumidai is a regular feeding spot for the Tancho (or Red-crowned) Crane, with corn (and other food) scattered each morning during winter, when food can be scarce, to help the cranes survive.
The Tancho stands about 140 cm tall and has a wingspan of up to 240 cm, and is largely white and black with a characteristic bright red crown. In kanji "Tancho" is written as "丹頂" ("丹" = "red" and "頂" = "head").
The nearby Tsurui-Ito Crane Sanctuary is another place where people can see these stunning birds. The large observation area gives incredible views, and there were well over fifty cranes displaying, dancing, and trumpeting on the day I visited. It was such an incredible thing to witness.
The people at both Tsurumidai and Tsuru-Ito do such an amazing job of conserving these magical birds. Birds that were once on the brink of extinction.
One thing I have to say though, is that I found the first hour of photography very challenging. It was very sunny, and trying to capture detailed images of mostly white birds against the bright white, and very glary, snow was really testing me.
I stopped for a break and headed up to look through the gift shop, and to grab a coffee from the coffee van. I sat down and took a look through what I had captured so far. The videos looked good, but the stills were very ordinary. I had never really done any wildlife photography in the snow, but did a bit of research before I went, and what I read made sense against what I had learned in my high school photography lessons (around 40 years prior - but we won’t dwell there too much). I was shooting at 1/4000 sec, f / 6, Auto ISO (most shots were ~200) and Exposure Compensation (EV) +1.33.
As I walked back towards the viewing area, I saw a Japanese photographer around my age or just a little older. He had a good camera setup, so I asked him (in my broken Japanese) if he spoke English. He spoke about as much English as I spoke Japanese! I asked him what camera settings he used, and through the common language of photography he told me to use 1/5000 sec, f / 6 - 8, ISO (as low as possible), and EV -1.33. Wow, that EV was the complete opposite of what I had been using!
Although I did not get the Japanese photographer’s name - thank you so much (arigato gozaimasu - ありがとうございます)!
I am (slowly) working through all of the images and video footage I took on the Hokkaido trip, and will be putting together a long-form video of it, as well as another post about my efforts to find and photograph Stellar’s Sea-Eagles.
Until then…
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