Notes on the Black Stork Ciconia nigra in Japan

Abstract

I have already wrote about the present status in Japan of the Japanese Crested Ibis and the White Ibis. I am going to state this time on the bird, Black Stork which is also disappearing from Japan. This bird came to Japanese Islands, especially to the various parts of Kyushu, as winter visitor before Meiji Era, perhaps via Korea. However, it reduced extremely in number and at last stopped coming perhaps because of the over-catching during twenty to thirty years after the Meiji Renovation. It seems to be because of the same reason that very few cranes come out to Japan at present. However, to Arasaki, Izumi-gori, Kagoshima Prefecture which is famous for the visiting place of the White-naped Cranes and Hooded Cranes, two Black Storks come both before and after the War, and even five in a certain year, but they also do not seem to have come these several year. Somebody in Ohta-ku, Tokyo, saw one of them and shot it dead in December, 1946, and in January, 1946, there was someone who saw two of the Storks in Akuné, near Arasaki mentioned above, and this can be said to be the latest visit of the bird, and I sincerely hope it was not the last visit. This bird is called Nabe-Koh or Kuro-Koh, and both mean Black Stork in English. One of the skins of Nabe-Koh which is kept in the specimen room of our Laboratory is a juvenile female caught in Sunamura at the mouth of Nakagawa River, near Tokyo, in January, 1892.It was well known that there was a nesting site on the Tozanmen of Kyongsang Pukto, but it is supposed to have been destroyed by the fighting in Korea. This may have something to do with the fact that no Nabe-Koh has visited Akuné or Arasaki since.