Lake Kussharo in eastern Hokkaido is the largest caldera lake in Japan in terms of surface area, and the sixth largest lake in Japan overall. Most years, the lake freezes over completely in winter, however, the winter of 2016, when I visited, was unusually mild by Hokkaido standards. The lake is home to the beautiful whooper swan which can be approached and photographed at fairly close distance. The whooper swan is not an endangered species and is widely distributed throughout northern Eurasia. The species is amongst the heaviest of flying birds and mate for life. Whilst the adult swans are predominantly white in plummage, the juvenile birds have grey and brown tonings to their feathers and are, to my mind, the more beautiful.
As you can see with the last image, I couldn’t decide whether I liked the original vertical format or the cropped horizontal better. I’ve included both versions, readers can form their own opinion! 🙂
As readers may appreciate, I’ve got a huge number of image files to work through from my Japan trip, you can expect more wildlife images in the days and weeks ahead. ~ KD