About a week ago I  completed my annual Hokkaido Group Photography Workshop Tour, and then my team and me took a few days rest in Central Hokkaido.  Now, I am running several one week Hokkaido birding and landscape photo tours for private clients.  We are now visiting with the Steller’s sea eagles who are the champion of raptors, and glacial relics actually surviving not one ice age but several ice ages! Somehow they seem immune to the passage of time. They are such extremely rare and formidable birds of prey representing near evolutionary perfection, and with its deep piercing voice, ra-ra-ra-raurau and those who have been in their presence “in the wild” have heard the echoes of the Steller’s dinosaur legacy.  Wildlife Conservationists and birders like me, as well as  Ornithologists, believe part of their evolutionary success may be their narrowly defined habitat and hunting grounds.  Most of the year, the Steller’s Sea Eagles call northeastern Siberia their home, but during winter, the Steller’s sea eagles venture to a warmer climate and the better winter fishing grounds of Hokkaido, Japan.  These raptors are the highlight to each of my visits to the pack ice during my annual Hokkaido wildlife birding photo workshop tour.  Spotting and photographing the Steller’s Sea Eagle is a birders dream come true, and observing their behaviour is thrilling, especially when while they attempt to dominate their predatory dominance over the endemic  White-tailed Eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla).  It’s almost like the White-tailed eagles try to treat the Steller’s Sea Eagles as if they were rowdy tenants subletting their space on the pack ice, but survival instincts sometimes lead to uneasy truces between the annoyed locals the White-tailed Eagles and the winter sightseeing Steller’s Sea Eagles.  During storms, the pack ice disappears, and the eagles come ashore.  In frigid temperatures, you may spot a group of Steller's Sea Eagles, White-tailed Eagles, and jungle crows in what almost looks like a huddle, similar to penguins.  The birds in Hokkaido are not in contact like penguins, rather they are shielding themselves from the windchill.  However, when prey becomes the primary focus, all the warm fuzzy feelings go right out the window.  Successful hunters immediately try to devour their prey, but on many occasions they take to the air to defend their catch while others seek higher elevations to start their dive bombing or to launch a sneak attack from below or occupy a blind spot in the hunter’s line of sight in order to strip the prize away.