Visit to Teuri Island

Teuri, famous for its birdlife, is only 4 km. from Yagishiri. So one morning, we took to ferry to Teuri. Although the distance is short, the ride took nearly 20 minutes because the current between the islands is strong.

Teuri has about 50 more people than Yagishiri and a more lively waterfront and tourist facilities. The reason is that hundreds of thousands of sea birds migrate to the island, some living and breeding there throughout the year. This attracts many more visitors than to Yagishiri. Because the birds are best seen in the evening, there are more inns at Teuri ensuring that there is steady business, except in the winter. We also noticed that the houses seemed to be in better shape and fewer houses had been abandoned.

We hired a van with a driver-guide and set off on a tour of the island. The driver was a lively person who pointed out the important landmarks and also sang a bar song for us. (Apparently, the few young people from Yagishiri come over to Teuri to drink because there aren't any bars on Yagishiri.) We were alos shown the "smallest high school in Japan" which has 10 teachers for 6 students. That's a ratio we teachers can envy.

The forests in Teuri have been denuded so the island consists mainly of a type of short bamboo. There isn't much grassland, but the view of the sea, as in other parts of Hokkaido, is breathtaking.








We climbed to about 200 meters and left the van to walk to various observation points. The ground was full of holes dug by the Rhinoceros Auklet bird (see photo below) that lays in these holes which can be as much as 3 meters deep. According to the guide, about 300,000 couples nest on Teuri. As elsewhere on Hokkaido, we saw large crows on Teuri. In Sri Lanka, crows are despised as scavengers. The fat crows of Hokkaido are not only scavengers but also predators. Intelligent and cunning, they come to the entrances of these holes (nests) and imitate the calls of
the Rhinoceros Auklet. When the chicks come to the entrance, they are devoured by the crows.



Rhinoceros Auklet

The best known bird on Teuri is the Common Murre, known in Japanese as the ororon. These birds were plentiful at one time, but have been greatly reduced in numbers now (mainly due to fishing nets) and the surviving 11 birds in Japan live on Teuri Island. Because we toured during the daytime, we only saw a few hundred birds.

From one side of Teuri, the entire Yagishiri Island was visible. The shoreline of Harboro on mainland Hokkaido can be seen at a distance.

We had a simple soba lunch on the waterfront, where I spotted this squid boat. Squid fishing is popular in this area with boats coming from the southern islands of Japan. To attract the squid, the boats have powerful lights. This boat had 80 such lights, each with 2000 watts of power. At night from Yagishiri, we saw such boats lighting up the night sky in the horizon.



We took the 1.00pm ferry back to Yagishiri, and it turned out to be this fast boats. The cost of the 20 minute ride was 2,850 Yen, which I thought was prohibitive. Only two passengers boarded from Teuri; us.