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

Great Knots transitioning from winter to summer plumage.

A Great Knot stretching.

It caught a bivalve and swallowed it whole.

Greater Sand Plover, adult summer plumage.

Isabelline Shrike, adult male, summer plumage.

The Eastern Yellow Wagtail is mid-way through its moult into summer plumage and looks rather scruffy.

A Ryukyu Kingfisher was perched in the shade of a tree. Beautiful among the green.

It was relaxed and preening, but a crow that was nest-building nearby came to disturb it and the bird disappeared into the vegetation.

A Crested Serpent Eagle hatched last year. From this point in its second calendar year, it begins moulting into adult plumage and by around autumn will look indistinguishable from a full adult. It was a remarkably tame individual.

An adult Crested Serpent Eagle in the rice paddies, eyeing prey in the irrigation channel. A crab, perhaps.

A Yellow-throated Bunting stretching up to peck at grass seeds growing in the lawn.

Where the grass was tall, the Yellow-throated Bunting moved by hopping up into the air.

A Ryukyu Kingfisher singing beneath the large leaves of a sea hibiscus, as if to escape the heat. Probably a male.

It was so hot that the kingfisher was also bathing in a nearby puddle. After the bath, it shook its body with a shudder.

Two Bar-tailed Godwits, unusual visitors, had come in to Sankakuike pond. It may be the first time I have seen them anywhere other than the sea.

There were also two Marsh Sandpipers. In the foreground is a Common Greenshank.

Nearby, a Common Snipe was out in the open — an unusual sight.

Among a flock of Northern Shovelers there was just one female Eurasian Teal.