Birding Tour Japan: Pelagic Trip and Miyake-Jima Endemic Birding Extension

This short three-day extension follows on from our two-week Japan: Spectacular Winter Birds tour and offers a pelagic birding trip via a ferry crossing to the small island of Miyake-Jima. We will also have a morning on the island looking for endemic, localized, and overwintering species unlikely or less likely to be seen on the main tour.

Black-footed Albatross is one of three albatross species possible on this short extension.

While our main tour will focus on those famous, stunning, and spectacular birds the country is so well-known for to world birders, such as Steller’s Sea Eagle, Blakiston’s Fish Owl, Hooded Crane, White-naped Crane, Red-crowned Crane, and so many more fantastic birds, this extension will look for a very different set of birds such as albatrosses, gulls, cormorants, seaducks, and localized species.

Our first day can be spent at your leisure, or we could go enjoy some fine Tokyo birding. As we will have just completed our main tour, we will see if there are any species the group has not seen properly yet or if there are any potential new species available to us. There are sure to be loads of great birding options on offer, Tokyo Bay in the winter is a fantastic birding area, particularly for wildfowl and gulls.

Black-faced Spoonbill may be seen around Tokyo Bay.

In the evening of the first day (around 10 pm), we will catch the overnight ferry to Miyake-Jima. “Miyake Island”, as it is also known, is a volcanic island in the Izu archipelago and is located approximately 110 miles (180 kilometers) southeast of Tokyo.

We will arrive on the island in the early morning of the following day and will have the full morning looking for several interesting endemic or localized species that can be found on the island, such as Izu Thrush, Owston’s Tit, and Izu Robin. In the afternoon we will again depart for Tokyo, but the first half of our journey will be during daylight hours, and this is when we will be in a great zone for pelagic species. Top target species at the time of our tour include Black-footed Albatross, Laysan Albatross, Short-tailed Albatross, Providence Petrel, and Tristram’s Storm Petrel. Several other seabird species, cormorants, and gulls are also possible while we are crossing this section of the Philippine Sea. We will arrive back to Tokyo in the evening and following a night in a city hotel we will depart the country the following day.

 We hope to find three species of albatross on this trip, including Laysan Albatross.