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

A Solitary Snipe has arrived!! Solitary Snipes have been recorded in various places on the mainland too, but one has come to Ishigaki Island as well!!

It is my favorite of all the snipes. A Solitary Snipe is so cool. ^^

The Solitary Snipe was feeding at a watering spot together with a Common Redshank and a Green Sandpiper. I would like to reshoot it in better conditions, so I hope it overwinters.

There are Northern Lapwings in rice paddies here and there. Almost all are juveniles.

The Brambling was feeding on a farmland road with little traffic. It was a lone bird and looked lonely.

My wife has gone home to her parents' place to give birth and my son has gone back to Fukuoka too, so on a free evening I went out for the first time in a while to photograph Ryukyu Scops Owls and Ryukyu Northern Boobooks. I met 7 Scops Owls and 3 Boobooks. It was after rain and a warm south wind was blowing, so they seemed to be quite active.

I found a very rare Bull-headed Shrike on Ishigaki Island the other day, and today I went and found the second shrike of the season. The color of the eye stripe feels much paler than on mainland shrikes, so it may have come from the continent.

In the last article I wrote something like "I don't know when I'll next see one in Okinawa," but one turned up in less than a month... Even so, there is no doubt it is quite rare in Okinawa.

Last time it was an adult male, but this time it is an adult female.

I found again, in a different rice paddy, the two Taiga Bean Geese that had vanished after being harassed by a Crested Serpent Eagle. They were sitting still at the edge of a paddy where the harvest was finished. By the way, the Swan Goose that had been with them also moved to another paddy. They must have been stressed by all sorts of things.

The three Swan Geese that arrived on Ishigaki Island on November 11 disappeared on the fifth day, and only one had been confirmed in a different paddy. But this morning, back in the original paddy there were four Swan Geese, one more than before, with two Taiga Bean Geese added. I had heard they were Tundra Bean Geese, but these are Taiga Bean Geese. ^^; I wonder if they joined up during the night and came back?

All the Swan Geese and Taiga Bean Geese appear to be adults.

While I watched from a distance for a while, the two Taiga Bean Geese took off for some reason. You can see it in the photo: they seemed to be startled by a Crested Serpent Eagle and disappeared into the eastern sky.

One of the Swan Geese flew too, as if pulled along, but the remaining three, who had stayed several days, perhaps knowing or perhaps not knowing that Crested Serpent Eagles do not attack them, did not fly, so in the end all four remained.