When the trip to Hokkaido was finalized one of my absolutely must have targets to photograph was the Blakiston’s fish owls, the largest living species of owls in the world, an endangered species that lives in some of the hardest-to-reach corners of northeast Asia.

There are thought to be less than 1000 pairs of these birds remaining in the wild, with very few individuals held in captivity. Found only in northeast Asia, this secretive species has a fragmented distribution in the remote forests of Hokkaido in northern Japan, the Russian Far East, and northeastern China.

Photographed at 4.30am after waiting from midnight in sub zero temperatures. -10 degrees Celsius I think it was.