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

Heavy rain since morning today, and I was woken before 7 a.m. by a loud clap of thunder. In Tonoshiro, Ishigaki City, rainfall reached 125 mm in one hour, the largest ever recorded on Ishigaki Island. There was flooding all over town. I was worried about the Cinnamon Bittern and Zitting Cisticola nests I found yesterday, but when the rain stopped and I went to look, they were carrying food, which was a relief. The Ishigaki Tit nest seems to have been lost.

On the other hand, the nursery school, which had been asking parents to keep children home because of the coronavirus, went back to normal operation yesterday, which is a relief. I hope this keeps settling down, but who knows...

I dropped my wife off at the hair salon, and since it would take an hour and a half, I took our baby and looked around the forest roads in the meantime.

The Ryukyu Ruddy Kingfishers were very active, and I found 8 birds at intervals of 20 to 30 meters. A Crested Serpent Eagle was drying its rain-soaked body, and a Malayan Night Heron was catching earthworms and the like after the rain.

I went out in the morning to photograph the Greater Crested Terns from the other day with the light behind me, but when I arrived thunder started to rumble in the distance and the sky quickly clouded over.

I counted 54 Greater Crested Terns perched on the embankment. A dozen or so more were flying about in the distance, so there are easily more than 70 Greater Crested Terns here.

Before long they will leave for the Senkaku Islands to breed, but young birds that don't take part in breeding are probably going to stay behind.

I shot with a SONY α9 II, a Metabones V mount adapter and a Canon EF600mm F4L IS II USM. It is perfectly usable for Greater Crested Terns in flight. What bothers me is that up to around ISO800, the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II I used before gives better image quality... ^^;

A rainy day on Ishigaki Island. Going around the neighborhood once, I saw a pair of Ruddy Kingfishers, a Cinnamon Bittern raising young, and busy food-carrying Zitting Cisticolas and Ishigaki Tits.

I'm on childcare leave, but the company contacted me asking if I could take photos for Bird Week. In the morning my mentor called to say "about 70 Greater Crested Terns have come in to the usual place," so I went there and found twenty-some flying over the sea, spotting prey and plunging to the surface.

Unfortunately it was already past 4 p.m., so the conditions were the worst, with the light dead against me, but I took a few photos that might be usable. The light was so poor I couldn't even observe properly with binoculars, so I'll have to reshoot tomorrow morning... ^^ I wonder if any have a black bill tip mixed in? ^^

A Red Collared Dove and an Oriental Dollarbird have also come in, so I'll try for those tomorrow as well.

While I was feeding the kids breakfast, the bird network messaged "Black Drongos are out," so I hurriedly finished breakfast and went straight to the site with my son. Two Black Drongos had appeared on Aguni Island the day before, and we'd just been saying "it's about time for Ishigaki Island too," so I was surprised... ^^;

The Black Drongos that appeared on Ishigaki Island, also two of them, perched on branches with a good view, and when they spotted prey they caught it with the flight style typical of Black Drongos. In the afternoon they were also bathing like Barn Swallows.