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

It's a White Wagtail sp., but I can't tell which. It is grey from the head to the uppertail coverts with no black at all. There is no eye-stripe, and the apron on the breast is mottled. My first impression when I found it was a first-winter Black-backed Wagtail, but when I looked through the binoculars it was much whiter and felt wrong.

A Korean Common Kestrel has come to the paddies. Its range is wide and it turns up unpredictably, but it is not very wary and I can observe it up close.

In the evening a pair of Black-winged Kites appeared over the fields, hunting. I was hoping for courtship feeding too, but there seemed to be no prey and they flew off somewhere. Their range is also wide.

The Pin-tailed Snipe and Swinhoe's Snipe that entertained me during the autumn migration are gone, and the paddies now hold only wintering Common Snipe. In the best places there were a dozen or so Common Snipe in a single paddy.

Three Red Collared Doves at a different spot from the 8 Red Collared Doves two days ago. Ishigaki is full of Red Collared Doves this season.

Northern Lapwings are also common, and I have already counted about 40.

The Black-faced Spoonbills that had been scattered around the island seem to be gradually gathering in one place, but they are still some distance away.

The flock of 6 Red Collared Doves I found the other day had grown to 8. Eight at once is my record so far.

The Malayan Night Heron was a very unwary individual. When my son and I sat down to watch it, it kept coming closer and finally ended up about 2 meters away.

The Grey-faced Buzzard that winters on Ishigaki is fondly known to locals by its dialect name, Utidaka (落てぃ鷹), and even has a song about it, which apparently is available at karaoke. I am a little concerned that the number of wintering birds is getting smaller each year.

The rice fields are lively with raptors such as Crested Serpent Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Common Kestrel, Black-winged Kite and Eastern Marsh Harrier, but the Oriental Turtle Doves and the small wagtails are living in fear.

At high tide on the coast, Grey-tailed Tattlers, Pacific Golden Plovers and Grey Plovers were packed onto a small rocky reef to rest. Since canoeing and SUP began on the rivers, the shorebirds and plovers have lost their resting places. This is also regarded as a problem by the Ishigaki City Nature Conservation Network.