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

Five Bar-headed Geese are still present.

A juvenile Tundra Swan enjoying life in the tropics. The flock of Bar-headed Geese is now 3.5 km away — closer than before. It feels uneasy having the juvenile on its own, so I do hope they join up.

I received a photo of an individual that had been staying on the Okinawa mainland at the end of last year and compared them, but they appear to be different individuals.

A Common Pochard in breeding plumage, male. They are everywhere in Kyushu but rarely turn up in Okinawa.

Buff-bellied Pipit. What a great bird. ^^

I managed to get what is currently my best and most endearing photo of a Buff-bellied Pipit.

It was moving through gaps in the grass and peering into cracks in the ground as it searched for small insects.

I thought I had a clean full-body shot, but grass was overlapping in the foreground. Still, the long, straight hind-claw — a key feature of the Buff-bellied Pipit — was visible. It helps with identification, though if you can see the claw clearly enough, you could probably identify the bird by other means too. ^^;

The majority of the flock is Red-throated Pipits.

A few Water Pipits were mixed in as well.

Yellow Wagtail (subspecies taivana), adult winter plumage. Around ten birds — juveniles and adults together — were moving as a group.