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

Oriental Pratincole in flight. Sony setup.

Oriental Pratincole in flight. Canon 600mm on a Sony body. When flying at top speed with a tailwind, I felt the autofocus couldn't quite keep up.

With the 600mm, the rendering of a perched subject is superb.

A Black-winged Kite gripping a half-eaten mouse in its left foot. It was 120 metres away, so extreme cropping was needed!!

The Black-winged Kite eating its meal seemed to find the crow rather annoying.

A Black-winged Kite that had caught a mouse.

Torresian Crow in flight.

It was driving other crows out of its territory. Probably getting ready to breed.

Eastern Spot-billed Ducks coming down into a rice paddy. A male Garganey dropped in after them.

An Eastern Spot-billed Duck missing its primary feathers. I wonder if it had some kind of accident.

A Purple Heron that had turned up in a sugarcane field.

An Oriental Pratincole in beautiful breeding plumage.

By the time I found it the harvest was already over, but it was probably searching for insects flushed out by the sugarcane cutting.

An adult Purple Heron took a large Black Rat.

A young bird from last year had also caught a Black Rat.

The first Pin-tailed Snipe of the season.

The Pin-tailed Snipe wanted to forage along the paddy bund, but was repeatedly chased off by a Common Moorhen that was on edge from nesting.

Finally managed to photograph a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper in breeding plumage this season.

First confirmed Eurasian Curlew of the season.

A Greater Sand Plover transitioning into breeding plumage. It seems that the Lesser Sand Plover subspecies — commonly known as Chūmedaichidori — also visits Yaeyama and Okinawa, and resembles the Greater Sand Plover.

High tide had pushed a group of Pacific Golden Plovers and Ruddy Turnstones up onto the rocks to rest.

A dark-morph Pacific Reef Heron. It was chasing a white-morph individual around.

An adult male Red-rumped Swallow.

Every time it wheeled around, the colour of its underparts caught the eye.

There were several dozen swallows in the air, but the wind direction was unfavourable and they were difficult to shoot.

Whiskered Terns were fluttering back and forth over the rice.

One dived into the rice and caught a dragonfly.

It swallowed the dragonfly whole in flight, wings and all.

A flock of Wood Sandpipers flushed by a Black-winged Kite. Two Temminck's Stints are also present.

Every bird in the frame is a Wood Sandpiper.

A male Ruddy Kingfisher opened its bill wide — I thought it was going to regurgitate a pellet, but it didn't. ^^;

Two Ruddy Kingfishers together deep in the undergrowth. They seemed to be searching for a nesting site, always staying close to each other. The individual on the right is the female.

A Ruddy Kingfisher perched right in front of me. I think the Ryukyu Ruddy Kingfisher is considerably more purple than the mainland form.

Against the all-red body, the light blue on the back stands out.

A male Ruddy Kingfisher.

The female paired with the individual above.