Blakiston’s Fish Owl, courtship of the world’s largest owl

Silent hooting

Blakiston’s Fish Owl is a fish-eating owl that can have some difficulty finding food during winters with heavy snowfall. Along small streams in the valleys, it focuses on places that are not completely frozen and takes advantage of every opportunity to get to the fish easily.

Thanks to an exceptional opportunity, I was able to spend three evenings and nights watching a pair of Fish Owls coming to a small stream to catch fish. Sometimes they came quite frequently, while on other occasions they appeared only three times during the entire evening.

Because the spot where the owl pulled fish from the water was illuminated, it was relatively easy to photograph it right at the water’s edge. That is, apart from the fact that during the sometimes five-hour waits for the owl to arrive, it was absolutely freezing.

I might have realised just how uncommon Blakiston’s Fish Owl is when I was looking for an MP3 recording that I could put on my phone and use for calling the owl in the field. The recordings I found were of very poor quality; in most of them, it was difficult even to distinguish the owl’s hoot. So I didn’t bother downloading them.

During those long nights of waiting, I was no longer surprised by the lack of good-quality recordings. The owl called regularly, giving three hoots at intervals of roughly 30 seconds. Yet even though it was sitting somewhere behind us, perhaps no more than 20 metres away, the sound was incredibly quiet and barely perceptible. It was hardly the kind of call anyone would associate with the world’s largest owl.

At Home in the East

Blakiston’s Fish Owl is found mainly in the coastal mountain ranges of the Russian Far East, on Sakhalin Island (although apparently nobody has seen one there since 1974), in the southern Kuril Islands, eastern Mongolia, China, and, most importantly for photographers, in the central and eastern parts of Hokkaido, Japan. It probably also occurs in North Korea and is undoubtedly one of the rarest owls in the world.

The total population is estimated at between 1,500 and 3,000 birds. Unfortunately, Blakiston’s Fish Owl populations are declining across virtually its entire range, particularly since 1950.

Hokkaido is a good example. Until relatively recently, Blakiston’s Fish Owl was found across much of the island, but today it survives only in a narrow strip along the eastern coast. There are now estimated to be just 80–100 birds on Hokkaido, with around 20 pairs breeding each year.

The main threat is the destruction and alteration of its typical habitat. Deforestation and increasing human pressure force the owls to move into sections of rivers where there are fewer fish. Winter can also be difficult in Siberia, where the owls gather around holes cut in the ice by fishermen. There, they can become easy targets for hunters and fishermen.

Artificial nest boxes may provide some help. They have been installed for Blakiston’s Fish Owls on Hokkaido and Kunashir, the easternmost of the Kuril Islands, since 1983. Occasionally, a pair will actually make use of one for breeding.

Courtship with a Little Fish

I came very close to witnessing Blakiston’s Fish Owls mating.

At first, only one of the owls flew down to the water to hunt. It ate the fish it caught and immediately went back for another. But on about the third or fourth return, it carried one of the fish away. I immediately thought, “Who on earth is it taking that to?”

I strained to see through the darkness towards a distant, unlit tree and, sure enough, there were two owls sitting about a metre apart. I probably nearly had a heart attack and immediately started panicking about how on earth I was going to photograph them in that darkness.

Through the viewfinder, there was nothing but blackness, without even the slightest hint of a lighter edge. I quickly switched to Live View, set ISO 20,000, and my Canon EOS-1D X (it was 2015, for those who remember) could suddenly see better than I could. The owls appeared to move in the sea of digital noise, even though they were sitting perfectly still, but the important thing was that I could actually see them!

Even though I could make them out quite clearly on the camera’s screen, I was still getting a shutter speed of two seconds. But I took the shots anyway. There was no time for heroic further adjustments—the owls were actually passing the fish between them. It was an extraordinary moment that was simply impossible to photograph properly…

I had perhaps three seconds to locate the owls in the darkness at a distance of around 30 metres, focus manually and set the exposure. I had not expected this situation, and there was simply no way it could work out.

I kept thinking about what I could have done better, but even in hindsight I can’t think of a way to photograph such a scene without using a flash or some other light. (The “mess” in the original version of the article was there purely for fun.)

And it could have been even better—or worse, depending on how you look at it. According to the literature, a pair of Blakiston’s Fish Owls will usually mate about four days after exchanging fish. Fortunately, we already had to leave for our flight to Tokyo. I’m not sure I would have wanted to try photographing the darkness all over again. Back then, the camera’s display was literally the only way I could see this extraordinary moment.

I think photographic technology has improved quite a bit over the past ten years. So if we are lucky next February, I hope to give it another try with my Sony mirrorless cameras and perhaps improve on those photographs.

Into the Wilds of Hokkaido

You can join me in Hokkaido from 15–27 February 2027 for a journey into the Japanese winter wilderness. The main characters will be a Red-crowned Crane performing its spectacular dance, Steller’s Sea Eagle not only in flight, White-tailed Eagles in dramatic aerial battles, Blakiston’s Fish Owl as the world’s largest owl, Red Foxes posing in the snow, Sika Deer framed by the mountains of Shiretoko, Whooper Swans in icy hot springs—and an extraordinary winter landscape as the backdrop.

Related links

• Articles about wildlife photography in Japan

• Articles about nature photography

• Photography workshops in 2026

• Photography trips in 2026