Family Trip to Miyako-jima
I couldn't get away for summer vacation because work was too busy, so we made a last-minute family trip to Miyako-jima. We visited the Grey-faced Buzzard migration survey site on Irabu-jima. The terrain is very flat, and the tsunami evacuation shelter at the survey point is only three stories tall — quite different from the mountaintop surveys on Ishigaki-jima. Birds that had headed out over the sea but given up heading south were coming back and dropping down onto Shimoji-jima one after another.
One of the surveyors told me that back when Grey-faced Buzzards were still hunted, crowds of people would show up at night with torches in the Casuarina forest along the channel between Irabu-jima and Shimoji-jima — from a distance it looked like some kind of festival. Of course, nobody hunts Grey-faced Buzzards anymore.
A small patch of scrubby woodland held plenty of Grey-streaked Flycatchers on migration. I also picked up two Blue-and-white Flycatchers. I heard Black Wood Pigeons calling and got fairly easy views by following the sound, but I was out walking with the kids so I never got to the point of raising the camera…
Grey-faced Buzzard photographed from farmland. Miyako-jima has no hills, so kettles of raptors could be watched from farmland and residential areas alike.
A kettle of several tens of birds formed at low altitude. Things seem quite different here from Ishigaki-jima.
View from the survey site on Irabu-jima. No hills.
The tsunami evacuation facility that serves as a base for Grey-faced Buzzard surveys.
First-winter male Blue-and-white Flycatcher.
Adult Grey-streaked Flycatcher. An individual with no wariness — it didn't flee even when vehicles passed close by.