JAPAN CRUISE DAY 6: ISHIGAKI-JIMA

 I'd been looking forward to visiting Ishigaki since the day we'd decided to visit Japan, because it has a couple interesting endemics and subspecies. Rather frustratingly we arrived into port a little later than originally scheduled but once Mrs B and I had walked off the ship, we jumped straight into a taxi and went to the car rental office. What I like about Japan is the formalities are very quick and within a few minutes of arriving a the rental office we were in the car and off to a Family Mart to buy some sandwiches for lunch. From the town it's only a 10 minute drive to Banna Park, where you can get pretty much all of the specialities. On the approach road a Ryukyu Green-Pigeon was perched on telegraph wires over the road. Good start! 

Ryukyu Green-Pigeon

Once in the park we walked along a quiet road and in no time at all i'd got the first of three Ryukyu Scops-Owls to be seen this morning. Despite the heat and humidity they were active and seemed to be hunting despite the late hour - I think I probably heard another 4 birds during the day as well! The three I saw were very bold and responded to my squeeking with avid curiosity as you can see from the photos.....

Ryukyu Scops Owl

The forest was rather quiet and I was hoping for Ryukyu Minivet, but that one would elude me all day. I did find a Ryukyu Flycatcher though, albeit an immature and not the male I would have liked. But hey-ho a tick's a tick and I spent a good few minutes watching it and taking photos...

Ryukyu Flycatcher

Then we drove up to the observation tower and had a great view of the island....

A nice view from up here...

Just a few minutes down the road was Ishigaki National Park where I had my first view of Ruddy Kingfisher, but apart from some Warbling White-eyes there wasn't much else doing, so returned to Banna Park. Undoubtedly the best sighting here was this Ruddy Kingfisher carrying a frog that I photographed from the car.....

Ruddy Kingfisher

So I decided that a change of habitat was needed and drove over to one of the beaches, where a bunch of Black-naped Terns were perched on the rocks, several Pacific Reef Egrets were present, and most surprisingly a Chinese Egret was here. So what to do next? I still needed Ishigaki Tit (well, it's lumped in Japanese Tit but sounds better) and Ryukyu Minivet and with just over an hour to kill I checked out a random wooded spot. And lo and behold, there was a pair of tits here. 

If it's split, then this is Ishigaki Tit. But for now just Japanese Tit..

But no minivets. So it was time to return the rental car and get back to the ship. And once we had set sail, I enjoyed a pretty decent seawatch over a 2h 20mins period as we sailed 75kms north:

3 Brown Noddy

3 Sooty Tern

25 Bridled Tern

9 Black-naped Tern

1 Roseate Tern

2 Bulwer's Petrel

110 Streaked Shearwater

26 Wedge-tailed Shearwater

5 Brown Booby

 So not a bad day at all...!