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

A Crested Serpent Eagle was struggling with a big cane toad. It was among the largest of its kind, so it must weigh several hundred grams.

The eagle pinned it firmly with both feet, but the powerful toad kept moving with the eagle, which weighs about 800 grams, still on top of it. The eagle regripped many times, and its sharp talons ended up crushing the toad's eyes.

When a Crested Serpent Eagle catches a big cane toad, it flips it over and eats from the innards, avoiding the poison glands, but this time the eagle and the toad fell together into a three-sided concrete channel and disappeared from view.

I heard a flock of White Wagtails had come in, so I went to see if there was anything odd, and there were a few pleasantly hard-to-identify birds mixed in. ^^

This season Chinese White Wagtails outnumber ordinary White Wagtails, and among them are birds that look like Siberian White Wagtails (シベリアハクセキレイ), and even suspicious ones that for a moment looked like Taiwan White Wagtails.

Most are in first-winter plumage, so it is hard to reach a definite answer, but weighing the possibilities is one of the pleasures of White Wagtails at this time of year. ^^^

Today was a short birding trip with a guest who wanted to see Swan Geese and others.

The two Oriental Greenfinches of the subspecies Oo-Kawarahiwa have been wintering in the paddies of Ishigaki Island since last month. They are extremely wary, and I finally got some decent photos. Even so, it is a 15 cm bird 63 metres away, so these are heavily cropped. ^^; They are staying a long time, so I'd like to shoot them a bit closer.

With this I have now photographed the Bonin Greenfinch, which a recent study proposed as a separate species ( paper ), the subspecies Oo-Kawarahiwa, and the subspecies Oriental Greenfinch. All that remains is the subspecies Chosen-Kawarahiwa (チョウセンカワラヒワ).

Three new birds have arrived in the rice paddies, in addition to yesterday's Pied Avocet.

There are now four Pied Avocets staying on Ishigaki Island, across two locations.

I'd like to watch birds sometimes without worrying about the time, but today again I only managed a little birdwatching at the paddies while travelling for work.

The Pied Avocet showed up for the first time in two months. It's not the first of the season, though. This one had no wariness at all, but the strong wind made it hard to photograph.

The Caspian Tern at the paddies was resting, having moved a short distance. Its feeding ground seems to be the dam.

In the strong wind and rain, an Osprey was eating on a paddy ridge. The grass was overgrown, so I couldn't tell what it was eating.

I found a settling pond I hadn't known about and took a look: there were Tufted Ducks, Northern Shovelers, Eurasian Teals, Great Cormorants and others. It's a fairly large settling pond for Ishigaki, so something else may turn up there in the future.

In the paddies where the rice harvest is finished, young Northern Pintails were feeding with Eastern Spot-billed Ducks. They kept following the Eastern Spot-billed Ducks around. Maybe it makes them feel safe.

Waders wintering here include Common Redshank, Common Greenshank, Black-winged Stilt, Green Sandpiper, Common Snipe, Northern Lapwing, Little Ringed Plover, Kentish Plover and Siberian Sand Plover.

This season I've met many Black-headed Gulls, and I've seen four in the last few days. I heard there was something that looked like a Black-tailed Gull at the fishing port, but I couldn't see it...

With the fierce north wind blowing, many of the Red-throated Pipits, White Wagtails, Grey Wagtails and Eastern Yellow Wagtails were sheltering in the shade of the grass.