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

Juvenile Crested Serpent Eagle. I heard its call and went looking — and there it was.

Juvenile Lesser Kestrel. Has been staying for the past few days.

On the Lesser Kestrel, the underwing spotting also looks faint.

Common Kestrel, first-winter male.

A Pied Avocet in the rice paddies near my home.

A Pied Avocet in another paddy field.

Also a different paddy field. There were three Pied Avocets.

A Javan Pond Heron on an extended stay.

A male Ryukyu Striated Heron I came across in the mountains. What on earth is it doing in a place like this?

Common Greenshank in winter plumage.

Wood Sandpiper (right) and Green Sandpiper.

Male juvenile Northern Shoveler. Eurasian Teal in the background.

Female adult Eurasian Wigeon. It appeared to have injured its right foot.

Male winter-plumage White Wagtail.

Balanophora fungus peering out from the dim forest floor.

A Desert Wheatear appeared out of nowhere. I rushed to get the shot.

The Desert Wheatear appears to be a first-winter male. It had a brief skirmish with a Dusky Thrush, perched on top of a roof, then vanished somewhere.

First-winter Pied Avocet.

Adult Nankeen Night Heron. An accustomed individual at a tourist spot.

Juvenile Purple Heron. It caught a juvenile Yaeyama pond turtle.

A small flock of Common Redshanks. They looked cold.

First-winter Whimbrel.

A Black-headed Gull that has been staying since last month. Second-winter plumage. Only two this season — a small number.

An individual thought to be a Tundra Bean Goose, a smaller Bean Goose, and a Lesser White-fronted Goose.

The two smaller birds. The right one is a Bean Goose, but the individual on the left has darker facial colouring and a different facial expression.

The underwing of the individual thought to be a Lesser White-fronted Goose.

This one from above. The differences from the Bean Goose are not easy to make out.

When they stretch their necks in alarm, the size difference is striking.

An unidentified duck. Could it have some domestic fowl blood in it?

A male Mandarin Duck. Breeding plumage.

An adult female Mandarin Duck.

A juvenile female Eurasian Wigeon.

A juvenile female Tufted Duck. An individual in which the black tip of the bill appears to be absent.

Tufted Duck, male. Transitioning from eclipse to breeding plumage.

Eurasian Coot, adult. Numbers are on the low side so far this season.

Juvenile Upland Buzzard. One appears every year, but this individual is not very wary and is easy to observe and photograph.

The brown leggings characteristic of the Upland Buzzard are conspicuous.

An Upland Buzzard in flight against a backdrop of Yaeyama palms. A sight you can only see on Ishigaki Island. ^^

An Upland Buzzard stooping.

The white patch on the primaries is clearly visible too.

Flying low over the rice paddies.

An Upland Buzzard returning to the leftover Cattle Egret it had not finished eating.

Male adult Peregrine Falcon (Siberian).

The female paired with the individual above.

A Short-eared Owl that turns up every year. Last year there were three in the same paddy field, but this year just one. You can't see it in the photo, but it's in the middle of eating a mouse.

A Brown Hawk-Owl that was right beside the Short-eared Owl above. The two took no notice of each other.

A Hen Harrier that had landed in the paddy field.

A Common Kestrel targeting a small bird.

A female Siberian Stonechat on alert for the Common Kestrel.

The flock of Buff-bellied Pipits panicked when the kestrel came in. Because the kestrel kept shuffling them around, I couldn't get a shot of the Red-throated Pipit that had been in among them… ^^;

A wintering juvenile Grey-faced Buzzard. This is the area where a dark-morph Grey-faced Buzzard had been wintering for five consecutive years up until last year.

The north wind was strong, and this Crested Serpent Eagle, raised in the tropics, looked cold.

A first-winter Isabelline Shrike.