Photo/Illutration Visitors can take a close look at Okinawa rails, commonly known as Yanbaru kuina, at the Okinawa Rail Ecology Center. The flightless bird is only native to the Yanbaru region, which was registered as a World Natural Heritage Site on July 26, 2021. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

Driving around northern Okinawa, I saw several yellow warning signs in English, “Drive slowly! Watch for Okinawa rails!”

At first, I drew a blank. Rails? Like train tracks, I thought. Then I noticed the illustrations and realized that “rails” must be a bird.

Further inspection of the fine print on the signs revealed that they were put up by the Yanbaru Wildlife Conservation Center.

High atop Cape Hedo on the northern tip of Okinawa’s main island is a site worth seeing--a humongous Yanbaru kuina bird looking out toward the ocean.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, so I decided to drive up the mountain to take a closer look. The general area, to me, had a spooky feeling, and I didn’t stay long.

I’ll just say that, well, at 11 meters tall, it’s quite a site, I mean sight. No, site. And sight.

Wanting to know more about this Okinawan bird, I went to Yanbaru Kuina no Mori (Okinawa Rail Ecology Center) in Kunigami village, the only place in the world where you can see the bird in captivity.

The bird was recognized as a species relatively recently, in 1981, and is currently designated as endangered.

The Okinawan islands were once part of the Eurasian continent, but later split off. With little outside intervention, many endemic species such as the Yanbaru rail evolved.

With no predators, the bird lost the ability to fly, but boy oh boy, it can run up to 40 kph on its spindly bird legs. That’s a feat, if you ask me!

The only flightless bird in Japan spends most of its time on the ground, but usually roosts in trees.

It jumps to low-hanging branches when it needs protection or sleep. In the morning, it takes its sweet little time to stretch and preen before starting the day.

Whether it’s aware that cleanliness is next to godliness, we’ll never know, but these feathered friends bathe several times a day in streams or pools, making them pretty angelic beings--they are winged, after all.

And they’re loyal; they mate for life.

The whole island used to be inhabited by the species, but human encroachment and the introduction of the mongoose in 1910, to kill vipers, nearly wiped them out.

It turns out that the nocturnal “habu” snakes and diurnal mongooses rarely crossed paths--amateur hour at its best!

Today, conservation and breeding programs are successfully reversing the damage and the bird population is rebounding, albeit slowly. The Yanbaru kuina thanks you for caring.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Feb. 5 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s Wanderings Around Japan," which depicts various places across the country through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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