Site Report: Amami-Oshima

Visits

• 2024-02-25: We arrived late with the ferry from Nago, but our hotel was right next to the ferry terminal, so no problems checking in. The hotel room surprisingly was a little run down and smelling of cigarettes. In the morning, we were picked up by a local guide for some hiking in the woods. Unfortunately, the weather was very windy and a bit rainy, and we did not see a lot. After the rental car office opened, we rented a car to explore some more of the island. We drove to the interior where there are a bunch of forested narrow roads, but it was still windy and cold. I found a vending machine with hot coffee in a empty campsite near a waterfall. Just before sunset, we were driving in the car when I saw an Amami Thrush on the road. I stopped to take some photos, but as soon as I shifted gears to park the car for better photos, the thrush was spooked by the clicking sound and long gone. That started the excitement as we saw a couple of owls, Amami Rabbits, and Amami Spiny-rats (I think the small rodents seen in the night forest were those). We ended up on one road that was very overgrown to the point that we ended up backing up for a long way to get back to better roads. There was even a gravel road in the hills. We finally got a good look at the Amami Woodcock foraging next to the road. On the way back to Naze, the road abruptly became a pier, and good thing I was driving slow or I could have driven into the ocean...
• 2024-02-26: The second day on Amami would also be the last before heading north on the overnight ferry. We started early and drove to the forest to the west of town. We had visited this forest the day before, but high winds prevented us from seeing much. Today started off a bit better with a couple of Amami Woodcocks flushed off the road on the way up. There was even a woodcock on one of the trails, but unfortunately, it saw us first and disappeared in a whirlpool of feathers. We got to see everything we had missed the day before. For the afternoon, we visited a small mangrove forest by kayak. We made it to some very nice beaches on the south end of the island before turning around to visit the magic bean tree and spiral bridge before boarding our overnight ferry to Kagoshima.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Asia
• World

Trips

• Japan