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

A Little Tern adult delivering a small fish to a chick.

Once the chicks have grown to around this size, the feeding handoff is over in an instant.

Undeterred by the strong wind, it flew about, going through the motions of hunting and picking up seaweed and other things floating on the surface.

An adult carrying food to the chicks.

The landings are pretty skilful too.

Offshore, flocks of Roseate Terns and Black-naped Terns were hunting together.

A Little Tern passing a small fish to a chick (right).>

This Little Tern is already passing food to the chick in mid-air.

An Okinawa Rail was roosting low to the ground. I wondered if it was injured. The primaries looked almost entirely absent.

This one was roosting high up in a Ryukyu Pine.

Today, from the first Okinawa Rail I found, there were three birds in total, spaced about 50 metres apart.

A Brown Hawk-Owl parent and fledgling side by side. The fledgling is on the left, the adult male on the right.

The Japanese Sparrowhawk female was keeping watch from her usual Ryukyu Pine. The chicks were napping in the shade of Terminalia leaves.

Near the Brown Hawk-Owl nest, a Broad-winged Mantis was attacking a Large Brown Cicada. The cicada's death cries rang out across the area.

A pair of Barred Buttonquail. The bird in the foreground with the black throat is the female; the one behind is the male.

They were walking through a sugarcane field.

An Oriental Pratincole that caught a Large Brown Cicada. It had snatched the cicada out of the air about 100 metres away.

This one was running after the lawnmower, catching grasshoppers and other insects that jumped out in fright. It also caught a centipede.

Just beginning to shift into winter plumage. That head-on face looks a bit like a lizard?!

This one is still in summer plumage.

Kentish Plover, male.

This one is a female. She looks ragged — worn out from raising chicks, perhaps.

The nearby windbreak was full of Crested Tree Lizards. This individual had particularly vivid green colouring and a sturdy build — a fine-looking specimen.

A different nest site from yesterday. A Brown Hawk-Owl chick, seemingly about three days post-fledging. While several birds were confirmed at the nest, only one had fledged. There was also only one parent, so the other chicks and a parent are probably somewhere out of sight.

Day two since fledging. Barely moved from day one. ^^;

The parent birds are in exactly the same spots as yesterday, female on the left and male on the right, in the same order.