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

A male Ryukyu Scops Owl keeping watch.

A Ruddy Kingfisher was perched nearby as well.

This Ishigaki Tit appeared to be searching with its partner for a nesting site. It was peering into a Ryukyu Scops Owl nest hole and alarm-calling noisily.

Pin-tailed Snipe spotted on a distant paddy bank. The backlight makes observation tough… ^^;

Another Pin-tailed Snipe. Looks very similar to the individual above.

Also a Pin-tailed Snipe. Compared to the individual above, this one tends darker.

Common Snipe (left) and Pin-tailed Snipe. The Pin-tailed Snipe is the same individual as the one at the top.

Another Pin-tailed Snipe, mid-moult into breeding plumage.

Swinhoe's Snipe (right) and Pin-tailed Snipe. In this case the size difference is clear, but in the field you basically can't identify them by size alone.

A Pin-tailed Snipe that came up onto a concrete block in the evening. This was the individual that had been hiding in the grass all day.

A Swinhoe's Snipe that wouldn't come out of the grass.

Another Swinhoe's Snipe in the grass.

I don't often get a chance to photograph them, but there was a Common Snipe here too.

While I was watching a flock of Black-winged Stilts, a Whimbrel came down. Looking at it this way, the Whimbrel is surprisingly small — or is it that the Black-winged Stilt is large?

About 20 Oriental Pratincoles had come down. Three are visible in this photo.