Winter Birding at its Best! A 2 week tour visiting 3 islands showcasing winter birding in Japan. On Honshu we visit the area around Tokyo looking for ‘garden’ birds before driving up into the Japanese Alps  to look for its forest birds. We take a trip to see the photogenic Snow Monkeys relaxing in their steaming pools before heading down to Haneda and the flight to Kyushu. Although our main target here is the Crane Sanctuary where thousands of cranes made up of several species can be seen, we also take time to look for gulls and shorebirds and take a pelagic trip to look for the endemic Japanese Murrelet. From Kyushu we fly to Hokkaido to look for Red-crowned Cranes dancing in the early morning mist  around Kushiro, the magnificent Stellers Sea Eagles  on the ice and the enormous Blakiston’s Fish Owl fishing in ice free ponds and streams.  A variety of alcids, gulls, wildfowl and other birds that are drawn to water plus some interesting mammals can also be seen.