Tenerife Feb 2009 (1 Viewer)

Tenerife February 2009

This is NOT a Trip report but I have added some maps to help people!
I am sure that Tenerife was once a very beautiful place, but the areas around Playa de las Americas/Los Cristianos have just been destroyed by some of the most unsympathetic development I have ever seen. The built up areas are birdless, and having seen all the endemics on the island I will not be in a hurry to return to Tenerife. We booked a small car and picked it up at the airport on our arrival. We stayed near Los Gigantes, and because we were so late booking our holiday I had very little time to get hold of any trip reports or books. However, this didn’t seem to be a problem. My target birds are listed below and I saw them all in the first 2 days:

Berthelot's Pipit Anthus berthelotii
Canary Islands Chiffchaff Phylloscopus (collybita) canariensis
Tenerife Blue Tit Parus (caeruleus) teneriffae
Blue Chaffinch Fringilla teydea
Island Canary Serinus canaria
Plain Swift Apus (apus) unicolor
Bolle's Pigeon Columba (trocaz) bollii
Laurel Pigeon Columba junoniae
Canary Islands Kinglet Regulus teneriffae
Barbary Falcon Falco (peregrinus) pelegrinoides
Barbary Partridge Alectoris barbara

Basically there are two major sites that you need/must visit to get the majority of birds.
1) Erjos (Map Attached) – the Laurel Forest for Bolle's and white-tailed pigeon along with goldcrest, chaffinch, robin, blackbird, long-eared owl
2) Las Lajs Campsite (Map Attached) - Blue Chaffinch (almost too tame!), great spotted woodpecker, goldcrest, blue tit, canary etc.. find the tree by the very small pool of water and ALL the birds will come to you...

And a couple of other site that are fairly generic and just seemed to be easy to get to from Los Gigantes– in other words there are probably numerous places you could stop to get these birds

3) Santiago del Teide (map attached) – for the falcon and partridge, we saw at least 3 individual falcons at this site, and watched Partridges on the deck during the walk from Santiago del Teide
4) Mt Teide – for the pipit and beautiful moonscape views – we had the pipit feeding in the carpark at the base of the chair lift (for information the chair lift is 25 euro’s per adult and 12.5 Euro’s per child)

I didn’t do the ferry crossing between Tenerife and Gomera, but for information the cheapest option for a family of 4 was to take the car at 106 Euro’s return – without of the car it was 159 Euro’s – explain that! We did see loads of Cory’s from the coast and a single Bottle-nosed Dolphin. However, if you did wanted to see Little Shearwater and Pilot Whale you would have to payout for the crossing.

All the best Andrew

A few more images

A few more images....

The Tit
The Lizard

and

The Pecker

More images

More images

Very useful tips and maps, Andrew. Wish I'd known about the Barbary Falcon site as I missed it on my trip but I'll see it one day in Morocco. Like you I'm in no hurry to return to Tenerife, it's even more birdless than Iceland in midwinter!

Extremely helpful Andrew, thank you for your efforts.

I've never been to Tenerife and each report that I read suggests that I will feel the same as you. It seems like a quick commando operation is required - pop in, get the target birds then get out pronto.

Is there nothing else to recommend in the island, maybe in the north?

If I was going to the Canaries again, I would have arranged to move between islands, staying on Lanzarote and/or Fuerteventura for Macqueens Bustard. I would have also booked on some of the boat trips between islands, with the hope of seeing some cetaceans – although some of the large marine mammals seem to have taken up residence in our swimming pool.... where we also had a very high tattoo count.....Andrew