A daily record.
Featuring photos of wild birds and nature, mainly from Okinawa Main Island and Ishigaki Island

This individual is in the same spot every day.

Among adult Brown Shrikes, individuals with secondaries missing through moult are conspicuous.

This male also has secondaries missing.

Brown Shrike, adult female.

Buff-bellied Pipits winter in good numbers in the rice fields of Hiratahara.

Wintering Long-toed Stint. First-winter plumage.

An Oriental Scops Owl perched along the prefectural road. It's a stretch of road where speeds tend to get high, so the bird is at risk.

Preening. By the way, what on earth is that small insect at the Oriental Scops Owl's feet…? ^^;

An Oriental Scops Owl near a house.

An Oriental Scops Owl on a forest road.

An Oriental Scops Owl in the park. Individuals of this species show little fear of people.

A Eurasian Hoopoe turning up at the go-to spot on Ishigaki Island as well.

In the Yaeyamas and Okinawa, Eurasian Hoopoes peak from mid-March through early April.

A Common Blackbird — noticeably larger than a Dusky Thrush or Pale Thrush, with a distinctive flight style, and above all that all-black body with just a yellow bill makes it stand out. One bird had turned up on a dark forest road near my home, but a Common Blackbird really does look best on a lawn.

This individual wasn't particularly wary, but it reacted strongly to crows.

The Rosy Starling was wintering at a cattle barn together with Chestnut-cheeked Starlings and Common Mynas. The Common Mynas were engaging in breeding behaviour.

The Rosy Starling was picking up fallen berries and eating them. The Chestnut-cheeked Starlings didn't come down — they were feeding up in the trees.

An adult male Common Kestrel that for a moment looked like a Lesser Kestrel. An individual you could easily mistake.

Isabelline Shrikes are moving off to their breeding grounds and thinning out steadily.

Dusky Thrush, adult male.

Dusky Thrush, female. Moulting from first-winter into summer plumage.

Temperatures are still low in Yanbaru. This Buffy Fish Owl had its feathers puffed up and looked cold. The individual was occasionally calling back and forth with a male.

A Buffy Fish Owl apparently lying in wait for a rat passing through the roadside ditch.

A female Buffy Fish Owl calling from the top of a post. The male and female of this pair here can be told apart individually.

A Okinawa Rail resting in a tree.

Shooting a Crested Serpent Eagle handheld at 600mm, 1/160s, looking up while standing — an unstable position, but the 5.5-stop image stabilisation is no joke.

Also handheld, a distant juvenile Crested Serpent Eagle. The higher pixel count means better cropping headroom too.

A Purple Heron appeared out of nowhere and I grabbed a shot handheld from inside the car. Good handling really makes a difference when you have to react fast.

The autofocus tracks well. The subject is large and slow, so I haven't been able to test it properly yet…

Good numbers of Wood Sandpipers had dropped into the rice paddies. Moulting from winter to summer plumage.

Bagged the Eurasian Hoopoe — my top target. After preening, it fanned its crest open.

A Eurasian Hoopoe stretching its wings and relaxing.

It caught a cockroach.

A Eurasian Hoopoe found at a different spot. It had the feel of a bird that had just arrived on migration.

This individual was opening its crest frequently.

Adult male Common Blackbird. Beautiful.

The Common Blackbird appears to be rummaging through dead grass in search of insects.

Three Pied Avocets. A flock of eight had been observed on Yonaguni Island — whether the same group or different, I'm not sure.

Adult Purple Heron. I encountered many individuals in grasslands and rice paddies.

A young Purple Heron.

Also a young individual.

A Crested Serpent Eagle from the north.

These two Crested Serpent Eagles were in the same pasture. Probably a pair.

Adult Malayan Night Heron. First-summer plumage, perhaps?

Adult male Brown Shrike. Molt is well advanced and it's looking rather ragged.

A Brown Shrike missing its tail feathers. Attacked by a Japanese Sparrowhawk, perhaps?

Common Redshank in nearly full summer plumage. A few birds had come down into a drainage channel.

Adult female Black-winged Stilt. This one arrived on its own.

Eight Pacific Golden Plovers were on the school playground. No Greater Sand Plovers mixed in. ^^;

I thought the first wave of Common Snipe had moved on, but I found two.

First-year male Common Kestrel. Quite a few juvenile feathers remain in the wing coverts, so first-summer plumage seems right.

Eurasian Coots had thinned out in number. In recent years some overwinter — or rather, oversummer — on the Okinawa mainland, but I don't see that on Ishigaki.

A Greater Sand Plover was resting at the edge of a wide field.

This is what you get at 600mm. At that distance it would be near-impossible to spot with the naked eye. ^^; Finding one by methodically working through field after identical field — that's a proper birder for you.

The Greater Sand Plover was absent first thing in the morning, but returned after a while.

Adult male Brown Shrike.

White-breasted Waterhen — I see them often enough, but they rarely let me get a decent photo.

Juvenile Crested Serpent Eagle inside a ranch. The bokeh from the 200–600 is really rough, though… ^^;

A young Purple Heron.

A Malayan Night Heron foraging along the prefectural road.

Adult male White-faced Wagtail.

It was keeping an eye on the sky above.

Zitting Cisticolas in breeding season are constantly flying over the grassland, calling away.

First-summer male Brown Shrike.

A female Brown Shrike.

A female Ruddy Kingfisher.

An exceptionally unwary individual — I could shoot to my heart's content. ^^

While waiting in the car, a beautiful Ruddy Kingfisher landed on a branch right in front of me!!

A Greater Sand Plover in the middle.

Another Greater Sand Plover. Its moult into summer plumage is slightly more advanced than the individual above.

It's a marginal call, but Greater Sand Plover.

Lesser Sand Plover and Red-necked Stint. Among the stints there are both winter-plumage and summer-plumage individuals.

A sleeping Lesser Sand Plover.

Grey-tailed Tattler and Lesser Sand Plover.

Kentish Plover moulting into summer plumage.

Common Greenshank in winter plumage.

While the other sandpipers and plovers were sleeping, a flock of Ruddy Turnstones moved about actively, searching for prey.

A Ruddy Turnstone caught a small earthworm-like creature.

The Red-necked Stints show a rich variety, ranging from individuals in full winter plumage to those nearly in full summer plumage.

A white-morph Pacific Reef Heron was flying offshore.