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

Grey-faced Buzzard in flight. Starting from the original 5472 pixels wide and cropping all the way down to 1192 pixels, and still this much resolution. Handheld, but the image stabilisation is working well. ^^ A little noisy, but that's APS-C for you.

Same Grey-faced Buzzard as above. This one cropped to 1990 pixels.

Pine woods means Olive-backed Pipit.

A cormorant in harsh backlight from the low western sun. No nasty flare — looks good.

A flock this size is unusual for Okinawa.

They flew off eastward in a beautiful formation.

A single Northern Lapwing turned up. It showed no sign of moving from this posture.

Temminck's Stint. Foraging mixed in with a flock of Long-toed Stints.

I finally managed to photograph a Ryukyu Least Bittern — they're so wary it's usually impossible to get a shot. On Ishigaki they're easy enough, but…

Five Greater White-fronted Geese.

Four Tundra Bean Geese.

Common Redshank.

Common Greenshank.

Long-toed Stint.

Pacific Golden Plover.

Common Snipe.

Small Indian Mongoose. It was once thought to be the Javan Mongoose, but apparently DNA testing identified it as this species.

A Lesser Sand Plover that had come from Jiangsu Province, China.

It also has a metal ring on the left leg, but the number could not be read.

Dunlin in first-winter plumage. About 20 birds were resting in scattered groups.

Kentish Plover, male, winter plumage.

A Far Eastern Curlew resting at high tide.

A Lesser Sand Plover that flew into a power line and died instantly.

Poor thing. I'd like to call for urgent underground cabling of power lines.

Pale Thrushes perched on high branches could be approached reasonably well.

The park has a vast expanse of lawn — ideal for Pale Thrushes and others searching for food.

Pale Thrush. The EF100-400mm F4.5-5.6L IS II USM I recently bought new handles backlit situations well too.

Okinawa's turf stays a beautiful green even in winter. The Olive-backed Pipit was catching small insects lurking in the lawn.

A flock of a dozen or so Olive-backed Pipits.

The White Wagtail working as parking-lot attendant at the Manko Waterbird and Wetland Center.

Since the first record on November 11, Pale Thrush numbers have kept climbing and they are now everywhere. Still just as hard to photograph as ever.

Kentish Plovers and others are resting on a land-readjustment site.

Plenty of Kentish Plovers, yet not a single ringed individual. ^^;