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Another trip to Tenerife (1 Viewer)

dandsblair

David and Sarah
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After Jos’s comprehensive report on Tenerife, I decided to just do a quick update on what we found from our trip last week.

First I should say that it had rained heavily the week before we arrived and there was some further rain when we were there, it was also pretty cold with snow above 2200 meters on Mt Teide, so perhaps birds were behaving differently with the abundance of water pools and/or altitudinal movements. Certainly we saw less on this trip and had less photo opportunities than on visits at other times (March, May, September and November).

Las Lajas

Usually my favourite spot and previously great for photography but on our first visit, almost nothing and we ended up going to the leaky pipe spot (opposite the stone building 1.4K down the hill) to see African Blue Tit, CI Chiffchaff and two not very close Blue Chaffinch. It was noticeable that they had moved the rock pool and taped up the tap at the far left hut (previously my favourite place) and created a new bigger set of pools near the hut by the playground, rangers were also cleaning out a tree stump which was full of polluted water. In three visits only Doves were using the new pool.

On the two subsequent visits we did a bit better with a flock of 30 Atlantic Canaries, a Goldcrest, a few Great Spotted Woodpecker, Chiffchaff, Raven, plenty of Blue Tits and a Kestrel.

We would usually have gone up to Las Canadas Information Centre gardens which has delivered close up views on Blue Chaffinch in the past but on the two days allocated for birding the area the TF21 was closed due to snow and ice sheets (very unusual I assume as it made the Spanish news). Instead we spend a little time by Pino Gordo (just a few kilometres above Vilaflor). Here I got the best view this trip of Blue Chaffinch.

Pigeons


On the drive along the TF5 towards Mirador de la Grimona, about 10K before the parking spot, I saw two Laurel Pigeon fly across the road into some trees, it coincided with Mount Teide revealing itself from the cloud, so I decide to take the next turn off and take in the view and see if I could find the birds. We parked in Lidl (also got our picnic for Chanajiga) and walked down to a small park split by the TF5 foot crossing and saw 2 Laurel Pigeons in the tree above us, sods law the SLR camera was left in the boot of the car. We did see a single Laurel Pigeon but much more distant at the Mirador with Kestrel and Buzzard.

At Chanajiga we saw 20 plus Bolle Pigeon’s, mainly fly overs but we did have one right above us that we still could not manage to photograph.

On the road up and down from Los Realjos to Chinajiga we saw around 20 Plain Swift, so it looks as some birds probably over winter here, we also saw 4 near the car park.

Sea- watching

One Cory’s Shearwater and a Pod of Bottle-nosed Dolphin was all we saw.

Other stuff

We found the best place for Grey Shrike and Barbary Partridge to be on the TF51 up to Vilaflor. There was nothing much around Golf del Sur, certainly no sign of any Red-throated Pipits, surprisingly we had more Grey Wagtail than Berthelot’s Pipit and only a single group of Spanish Sparrow; the pool at El Medano was empty on two observations ( the area was very busy).

On last thing we didn’t see a single Robin (one heard at Chanajiga only) and had only 2 Goldcrest here well down on normal visits there was some tree felling going on so that could have had something to do with it as well as the weather.
 

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A few views of a wintery teide
 

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