Japan is a winter wonderland that reminds me so much of my youth in northern Minnesota, save the mountains. Hokkaido is one of my favorite of all places I’ve traveled to. Without going there or doing research, you would never imagine Japan could be so wonderfully wild, but it is. In the north you can find whooper swans, Steller’s sea eagles, white-tailed eagles, red-crowned cranes, and even grizzly bears. I’ve never photographed the grizzlies of Hokkaido, but it’s on my bucket list.
These whooper swans are spending their time on Lake Kussharo, most likely having come from their summer range in Russia. Whooper swans are massive, with a wingspan of 81-108 inches and weighing 16-31 pounds. They are so large, their legs can only support them for short periods of time, and so they spend virtually all of their lives on large bodies of water. For more information and to support the whooper swan’s habitat, visit The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), a conservation charity that saves wetlands in the UK.