Now this was a day i'd long dreamed about. The famous Okinawa Rail is a bird that has been at the back of my mind for many years and it was with a mixture of eager anticipation and total abject fear at dipping that I left the cruise ship this morning. In fact I was the very first person ashore and was soon driving the couple of hours to the very north of the island and Yanbaru National Park. It was around 9am by the time we reached the area and began driving around some local rail hotspots and with each passing minute my hopes were fading. It's a bird you by rights need to be searching for at first light, and not what I was doing and trying for it mid-morning in the incredible heat and humidity. I began thinking how stupid I was to be trying this but I had no choice.
Anyway, an hour went by and things were looking bleak. Very bleak. The road we were on was in a well wooded area and with the windows open we were also keeping an ear out for Okinawa Woodpecker, and sure enough one called just as we drove by it so we hopped out and found it relatively easily feeding about 20 metres away. The views were brief and a little obscured but enough to tick it and I felt a little stress ease away. So we kept on driving around the same lengthy circuit hoping to jam into a rail at the side of a road or leafy track..... Yeah right! On our 3rd circuit we hit the jackpot and as we crawled slowly along a narrow road I glanced down a side road and there it was..! The unmistakeable shape of a big, dark rail. It was only a flipping Okinawa Rail just standing there, back on and standing next to the only piece of trash on the Okinawa roads i'd seen totally messing up my photo!! I didn't really care about that at the time as I was so excited and flipping relieved to have nailed one.
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| The first Okinawa Rail. Oh yes baby!!! |
Fist pumps and that adrenaline rush you can only get from seeing a lifer followed and I had the whole 'shaky hand' syndrome due to my excitement and it's amazing any of my photos are anywhere near sharp!!! When the rail eventually decided to walk into the undergrowth and disappear. As luck would have it we drove a few hundred metres more and there on another side road were 2 more Okinawa Rails. One disappeared almost immediately but the other stood there looking at us for a while before walking towards us a little and it too melted away into the undergrowth. Wow!
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| The second sighting of the rail |
So what now? Well I was after Okinawa Robin so headed up into the national park where another Okinawa Woodpecker gave spectacular views and 3 Ryukyu Minivets showed briefly. I was particularly pleased with the latter sighting having missed it on Ishigaki the day before. But no robin yet.
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| Okinawa Woodpecker |
After a short respite for lunch we made a last ditch attempt at another site and with an impending storm approaching we were on a countdown. But I needn't have worried (isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?) as I stumbled across a very aggressive Okinawa Robin singing from it's perch beside the trail I was on. Wow! WHAT A BIRD!
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| Okinawa Robin |
I did mess up my photos and only got one decent shot out of 50 or so I took. But it was a stunning looking bird and my 4th lifer of the day! And that was it. it took nearly 3 hours to get back to the port, with some heavy traffic making me sweat a bit but I made it in plenty of time in the end and I celebrated with some very cold beers, cocktails and wine tonight, which I paid for with a hangover the following morning!!
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