All three snipe species on Ishigaki Island — Pin-tailed Snipe, Swinhoe's Snipe, and Common Snipe — are finally present at the same time. From here, Pin-tailed and Swinhoe's Snipe numbers will decline, while Common Snipe will increase.
A textbook individual — identifiable as Pin-tailed Snipe at a glance.
Temperatures rose and the paddy birds became a little more active — I had good views of bathing behavior and similar scenes.
A distant Pin-tailed Snipe.
Pin-tailed Snipe, Swinhoe's Snipe, and Common Snipe are all staying in the paddies of Ishigaki Island. Spring snipe identification gets harder than autumn — which is actually quite enjoyable. ^^
Pin-tailed Snipe spotted on a distant paddy bank. The backlight makes observation tough… ^^;
We held the 6th Ishigaki Island Snipe Camp. This time one woman and one man joined us. Day one was tough going, but on day two we managed reasonable views of both Pin-tailed Snipe and Swinhoe's Snipe.
Spring snipe are harder to identify than autumn birds, and some individuals were left for later determination.
For the main species seen other than snipe, please see the side notes.
Past camps from the 1st onward are also available at past Ishigaki Island Snipe Camps.
Pin-tailed Snipe. The scapulars and other feathers are changing into breeding plumage.
Ahead of the 6th Ishigaki Island Snipe Camp, I went to scout the paddies around the island. Pin-tailed Snipe, Swinhoe's Snipe, and Common Snipe were all confirmed — a relief. Now there is nothing left to do but hope they stay for a few more days.
First Pin-tailed Snipe of the season!!
I made my third trip to Yonaguni Island this month. Small passerines were the main attraction: White Wagtail, Eastern Yellow Wagtail, Little Bunting, Daurian Redstart, and Brown Shrike among others.
There was a mixed flock of three subspecies of White Wagtail. This is a male leucopsis.
Spring migration on Ishigaki Island has been building gradually since February, and by March it has grown noticeably more active. The variety of waders is increasing first of all. Brown Shrikes and White-cheeked Starlings that spent the winter on the island are beginning to move north.
Some individual Crested Serpent Eagle juveniles are well along in their moult.
A juvenile Crested Serpent Eagle. It is within the territory of an adult pair and gets chased off every time it is spotted, yet it stubbornly stays put.
The third Common Hoopoe of the season has arrived, following last week's bird. This individual showed no wariness at all — when a car passed nearby it flew off only a short distance. Reports of arrivals have also come in from other islands, and it looks like this is a good year for Common Hoopoe.
Temperatures are rising and spring migration is beginning. A mixed flock of Taiwan Wagtail, White Wagtail, and White Wagtail arrived in the rice paddies.
Among the waders, wintering birds — Common Snipe, Common Redshank, and Wood Sandpiper — have been joined by northbound migrants, making things a little livelier.
Resident birds — Crested Serpent Eagle, Purple Heron, and Cinnamon Bittern — were all active in the run-up to the breeding season.
Discovered what is the third Eurasian Hoopoe of the season on Ishigaki Island.
I have been able to document Pin-tailed Snipe wintering on Ishigaki Island as a definite record. This is the individual confirmed last November. Construction started nearby and I was too busy with work over the year-end and New Year period to get out and check, but it was wintering at the same spot.
Pin-tailed Snipe had been observed here as late as late February 2024, but a solid wintering record had remained elusive. Having confirmed this bird from November through to late January, it now stands as a firm wintering record. I can only hope this individual stays on through to the spring Pin-tailed Snipe season in April.
This Pin-tailed Snipe left a strong impression, so I've been able to identify it individually. You can tell at a glance. ^^ First-winter plumage.
Short-eared Owls have been wintering here again this season, as they did from around the end of last year. Surprisingly large numbers have turned up. A Long-eared Owl was also reported, but only for a single day — unfortunately I was not able to see it myself.
Out in the paddies during the day there are also wintering waders and plovers. Past mid-January I get the sense that they are slowly starting to move. I expect the main movement to begin around late February.
There was a Short-eared Owl staring intently at a thicket where mice were lurking. It seemed there was another one in the same area.
A Greater White-fronted Goose has been present for several days now, but for some reason the guide is apparently calling it a Greylag Goose. To me it is clearly a juvenile Greater White-fronted Goose… ^^; A juvenile Tundra Swan has also arrived on its own. On Iriomote, two Tundra Swans and a Siberian Crane are staying as well.
Multiple Pied Avocets have turned up across the island. That day I tallied six birds in total — a group of four and singles at two separate locations. In the paddies, Northern Lapwings, Pacific Golden Plovers, Kentish Plovers, Little Ringed Plovers, Common Greenshanks, Common Redshanks, Wood Sandpipers, Dunlins, Common Sandpipers, Green Sandpipers and Black-winged Stilts are all wintering.
This season I had already confirmed the subspecies leucopsis and ocularis White Wagtails, but this day I was finally able to see the subspecies alba White Wagtail. That is pretty much how it goes every year.
A juvenile Greater White-fronted Goose. Why does it get misidentified as a Greylag Goose?
A Hen Harrier was hunting right in front of me. I could not tell what it was after, but startled Common Pheasants kept flushing repeatedly and the harrier did not seem to catch anything… ^^; My daughter, who was watching with me, was thrilled — when the Hen Harrier banked sharply she could actually hear the wind cutting through its wings. ^^
In the channels there were wintering Black-faced Spoonbills, in the paddies several Chinese Pond Herons, and we had Saunders's Gulls and Black-headed Gulls flying together — all in all a fun day of birdwatching for the kids.
A Hen Harrier quartering the rice paddies in search of prey.
A Taiga Bean Goose that had been reported a little while back was resting in the paddies. Waders present included Pied Avocets, Black-winged Stilts, Long-toed Stints, Wood Sandpipers, Common Redshanks, Common Greenshanks, Marsh Sandpipers and Common Snipe. An out-of-season Sharp-tailed Sandpiper was also there on its own. Temminck's Stints have been numerous this season — I confirmed several birds.
Bean Geese had been seen in multiple individuals, but on this day there was only one.
This breaks the latest date record for Pin-tailed Snipe on Ishigaki Island by a full month!!
I found it among a small flock of Common Snipe. It was not a typical Pin-tailed Snipe individual, and at first I wavered between that and Swinhoe's Snipe, but after watching for a while I became certain it was Pin-tailed. I stuck it out for about an hour and managed to get photos of the tail feathers as documentary evidence.
It is an exceptionally Swinhoe's-like individual, which makes it all the more interesting. This is definitely a Pin-tailed Snipe I won't forget in a hurry. ^^
The previous late record for Pin-tailed Snipe on Ishigaki was an adult on 18 October, so this is a substantial update to the record. ^^
Incidentally, the earliest record is a juvenile in late February. That individual may well have been wintering, though.
Pin-tailed Snipe, first-winter plumage.
Autumn migration on Ishigaki Island is winding down, but an out-of-season typhoon drove in a greater variety of birds.
A Pied Avocet arrived at a paddy field near the town centre.
A work trip to Yonaguni Island gave me a little time for birding. I had hoped for rarities like the Chestnut-winged Cuckoo and Grey-faced Buzzard from the previous year, but it didn't quite work out that way. Even so, I got to see a flock of Eurasian Siskins — a species you rarely encounter on Ishigaki — so it was an enjoyable trip.
My first Naumann's Thrush of the season turned out to be on Yonaguni Island.
A Crested Serpent Eagle was eating a toxic Cane Toad. Below I reproduce the article I wrote on Crested Serpent Eagle venom resistance, published in the newspaper on 19 July.
Cane Toads were introduced to Ishigaki Island around 1978 to control sugarcane pests. They secrete a potent cardiotoxic steroid, bufadienolide, from their skin — a toxin that can stop the heart. There are confirmed cases of the native Sakishima Rat Snake dying after eating one. The Crested Serpent Eagle, on the other hand, shows no ill effects even after consuming the toad's highly toxic skin. Local birdwatchers had long noticed this, but no scientific explanation had been established.
The research team analysed tissue samples from 24 Crested Serpent Eagles that had died from accidents or illness between 2020 and 2023. Focusing on an enzyme responsible for ion transport across cell membranes — the target of the toxin — they discovered an amino-acid substitution in a key region associated with venom resistance, known as the Q111E mutation. This mutation appears to prevent the toad's toxin from binding to the enzyme, neutralising its effects. Similar mutations have been found in snakes that prey on toads and in birds that eat toxic butterflies, and the finding is regarded as an example of convergent evolution — the process by which unrelated lineages independently arrive at similar traits through different evolutionary paths in different places.
Strikingly, Crested Serpent Eagles on Iriomote Island — where Cane Toads have not established — and even a subspecies of Crested Serpent Eagle on the distant Indonesian island of Simeulue carry the same resistance gene. Genetic analysis suggests the trait has been preserved since around the time the Crested Serpent Eagle diverged as a species, long before any alien species was introduced. Tobe of Kyoto University's Wildlife Research Center explains: "The venom resistance of the Crested Serpent Eagle is not a recent adaptation to environmental change, but an ancient trait inherited from its ancestors — one that has, by coincidence, also helped to mitigate the physiological impact of an invasive species. It is a rare example of that."
The study also confirmed similar resistance gene mutations in snake eagles closely related to the Crested Serpent Eagle. There are reports that the Black-chested Snake Eagle in South Africa showed no health problems after being fed toxic toads in captivity for 12 months, suggesting this ability may be characteristic of the group as a whole. Meanwhile, on Japan's Ogasawara Islands, Eastern Buzzards have been recorded preying on the same Cane Toad, but no clear venom-resistance mutation was found in their genes, pointing to the possibility that they cope through a different mechanism.
The study also found that the Crested Serpent Eagle populations on Ishigaki and Iriomote islands are genetically distinct. Despite a separation of only about 20 kilometres, movement of individuals between the two islands appears to be almost nonexistent — a finding the team says "suggests that the Iriomote and Ishigaki populations should be considered independent conservation units." The research demonstrates that an organism's "hidden abilities" may play an important role in responding to environmental change. While the findings offer a significant new perspective for biodiversity conservation, Tobe also sounds a note of caution: "The fact that the eagle is making use of the invasive species does not mean the invasive species problem can be ignored. Once the Crested Serpent Eagle is preying on them, the toads are being incorporated into the ecosystem, and there is a risk of further disrupting the overall balance." As the global impact of invasive species on ecosystems becomes an ever greater concern, this discovery — shining a light on the unexpected adaptive capacity of native species — underscores both the depth of evolutionary processes and the complexity of conservation strategy.
A Crested Serpent Eagle eating a Cane Toad. As the research papers suggest, the toxin seems to pose no problem for it.
A Black-headed Bunting turned up after a long absence. It was very likely the same individual I briefly glimpsed in the same paddy field about a week ago. It was mixed in with a flock of several hundred Eurasian Tree Sparrows.
A Forest Wagtail appeared on the usual forest road — the sixth individual this season. Arriving this late in the year, there is a good chance it will winter here. Last year one wintered at the same spot. Once they settle into wintering mode, though, they tend to stay deep inside the forest and become harder to observe.
Arctic Warblers have been showing up since early October. Birds fresh in from migration are often in small flocks, but now they have spread across the island and each is holding a small territory. Many individuals will stay through to spring. Come April, they form flocks again in preparation for the northward journey, and some begin to sing.
Brambling have also appeared. They joined up with Eurasian Tree Sparrow flocks and were feeding on second-crop rice grain in the paddies.
White-shouldered Starlings — a few birds — were mixed into a flock of several tens of White-cheeked Starlings, along with around 20 Common Starlings. The wintering White-shouldered Starling population on the island is sizeable in its own right, and flocks of several tens are regularly seen in parks and the like.
At this time of year, snipe are mostly Common Snipe, but among a flock of ten-odd I found just two Swinhoe's Snipe. I expect them to disappear once the second-crop rice harvest gets under way. Other waders lingering in the paddies include Common Redshank, Common Greenshank, Marsh Sandpiper, Black-winged Stilt, Wood Sandpiper, Green Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, and Long-toed Stint.
Ducks are increasing too — I recorded my first Mallard of the season on Ishigaki. Mallard used to be quite scarce on Ishigaki and Okinawa, but the numbers being seen seem to grow a little more each year.
A Black-headed Bunting standing out prominently among a flock of Eurasian Tree Sparrows. It was constantly harassing them….
Two Pied Avocets have been present for several days. A flock of Black-faced Spoonbills and Eurasian Spoonbills, Bar-tailed Godwit, and Garganey have been staying a long time. Wintering Eurasian Teal and Northern Shoveler are also steadily building up.
Two Pied Avocets with zero wariness are staying in the area.
Pechora Pipits have arrived again this season, in small numbers. Last year I found two among a flock of Red-throated Pipits. This time I noticed them by their calls overhead, and after a flock of five dropped into the paddy I searched and found two individuals. ^^
While looking for the Pechora Pipits, a Brown-cheeked Rail also appeared. It was a brief encounter — the bird was very wary — but a welcome one.
Ducks are growing in number and variety; I had my first Northern Shoveler of the season on this day. By the time the ducks arrive, both Pin-tailed Snipe and Swinhoe's Snipe have already moved on, leaving large numbers of Common Snipe behind.
The Javan Pond Heron that arrived in late July was still present. At peak there were three, but now only one remains. It should stay until around February, being in wintering mode.
Elsewhere, I noted Masked Bunting and Yellow Bittern. A Pied Avocet apparently made its way into the grounds of a facility where a friend of mine works.
Paddyfield Pipit seen again this season.