Number 108

So I went to Furui-chi in the afternoon and found this lonely Wood Sandpiper (Tringa glareola) standing in one of the empty lotus fields. The bird then becomes number 108 in my Beppu bird list. It was in its full breeding plumage, which looks quite different to me because I usually see it in a non-breeding one. Back in Thailand, this bird is a very common winter visitor to any wetlands and I've never seriously thought of taking photos of one. Today, sitting alone in the lotus field in a city where decent birds are as scarce as the chance of yen to go down, I seriously followed the bird and tried real hard to photograph it. Well, I still failed to get close to it though.

Here it caught some kind of an aquatic insect.

Luckily got this shot before it flew out at dusk. Note its thinly-barred white underwing coverts unlike the dark underwings of the similar Green Sandpiper.

It was quite vocal and its voice sounds really familiar to me. Well, I used to hear it everytime I go out birding in the rice fields near my house in Thailand in winter time.

Another nice find of the day was this female Chestnut-cheeked Starling, which was feeding along with a flock of White-cheeked Starling. It's not a common bird around here and I've never seen it during spring before. Too bad the bird was far too shy and flew off too soon to get any better shot.