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

There was a Whiskered Tern over the rice paddies, the first of the season. Flying around above the paddies, it would spot a dragonfly among the rice, make a sharp turn, dive steeply and catch it.

I had brought the SONY FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS and the Canon EF600mm F4 IS II USM, so I put the SONY teleconverter SEL14TC on both. The Canon 600mm was attached to the α9ii via the Metabones V, a Canon EF adapter with electronic contacts for Sony E-mount, and I compared the two.

The FE 200-600mm is a native lens, so of course it shot perfectly.

I tested the setup through the Metabones V in the same way, and it too tracked a flying Whiskered Tern with ease!! I think many people are curious about Canon lenses on SONY bodies, so I plan to write a proper review later. ^^ Performance differs considerably depending on settings and how it is connected. Some articles online say it is completely unusable, but that is simply not true. I will write it up, from how to buy the Metabones V, which is not sold in Japan, to the settings, so please look forward to it. I am not holding back on purpose; I just don't have time to write... ^^;

They had already appeared on Okinawa Island and Yonaguni Island, and I had been waiting and waiting, but the first Curlew Sandpiper of the season has now arrived on Ishigaki Island too. It was feeding in a paddy together with a Temminck's Stint.

At a nearby river mouth there were Red-necked Stints, Dunlins, Kentish Plovers and others. Someone was casting a net, so the numbers were small.

On Ishigaki Island, calls began to be heard around mid-March, and the first Ryukyu Ruddy Kingfisher was seen on March 26. Their numbers have jumped since the start of April.

Today I went around three Ruddy Kingfisher spots and saw five in total: two pairs and a single bird.

Today I went birdwatching with a baby under one year old. Temminck's Stints in the paddies have increased, and I was able to photograph individuals with conspicuous breeding plumage. I also found Common Greenshanks well advanced in molting into breeding plumage.

Greater Painted-snipes are getting harder to observe as the rice grows taller, but I confirmed a female and male pair.

I confirmed the first Swinhoe's Snipe of the season, about 15 birds in all. Swinhoe's Snipe and Pin-tailed Snipe migrate later than Common Snipe, from the start of April.

Common Snipe had a first wave of migration in early March, and a second wave seems to have arrived in April; I confirmed a dozen or more of these as well.