Eagle

On the island of Hokkaido, literally “path to the North Sea”, the northernmost of the four main islands of the Japanese archipelago, there are two species of sea eagle among the 10 species living throughout the world: the white-tailed eagle and the Steller's eagle. The Steller's Sea Eagle, also called emperor eagle, is the largest and most powerful of eagles. Rare species whose population is estimated at around 5000 birds worldwide. We can sometimes observe more than 2000 eagles coming to spend the winter on the Shiretoko peninsula in Hokkaido. The white-tailed eagle, a little less massive, is well represented all year round and in greater numbers in eastern Hokkaido, it lives in the same habitat areas as the Steller's Sea Eagle. Steller's Sea Eagle and white-tailed eagles migrate every winter in November from the Kamchatka peninsula, Sakhalin island and the coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk in northern Siberia to Hokkaido. They will return there at the end of February to the end of March. During the long and very cold winter in Hokkaido, the Sea of Okhotsk is covered with drifting ice from Siberia, this is the Ryuhyô. The most remarkable thing about this immense ice floe is the silence but also the almost imperceptible sound of the rising tide which, under the ice, continues its work.