Waders in the rain............

I had a spare couple of hours on Friday afternoon and we checked the recently irrigated local padis to see if any waders had appeared.................


And some had indeed appeared..............

The weather was dreadful: torrential rain and very windy too.

There was one Black-tailed Godwit, a lot  scarcer in Japan than in the UK I'd say.

It ate a huge worm..................

ISO 1600 and lens wide open with minimum shutter speeds for handholding out of the car window: these shots may look a bit mushy.

The only other wader species were about a dozen Wood Sandpipers.........

These are much commoner here than they are in the UK and they are a frequent spring visitor to the ricefields.

Hope I can see a few more freshwater waders in the padis: the window is quite short as the fields are irrigated only towards the latter end of the wader migration.