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Message: <blockquote data-quote="markgrubb" data-source="post: 1241589" data-attributes="member: 11067">Family desires for warm but not too hot weather and also a place suitable for teenagers meant that  I found myself heading for Southern Tenerife for my summer holiday. I had read a couple of trip reports, such as Edwards recent one from just 6 miles down the road and it filled me with a little dread, birding wise.So the question was how to get some decent birding in and not divert too much from family duties. We had a car for a week and plan A was for me to get up early and get out and about. Good idea but sunrise is 7am and with low cloud often present the reality was that it was often 7.30 before any birding could be done. I had Collins/Clarkes book and it is sad to say that many of the sites he mentions are/have disappearing under concrete as more and more apartments are being built. Birding in the area we stayed, Costa Adeje, is generally uninspiring- a mix of volcanic rock, cacti, abandoned dusty tomato and banana fields in amongst all the development. So in the limited time I had…..Costa AdejeSo what was about locally? In the region of where I stayed plain swifts abounded and could be seen from the coast to near the top of Mt Teide. Blackcaps seemed to sing from any tree. Warblers were generally scarce but I saw a few Sardinian warblers and a solitary Spectacled warbler. The subspecies of chiffchaff were very common and I heard a couple give their strange mangled song. Berthelot’s pipits could be found fairly readily in the scrub once I tuned in to their calls. Great grey shrikes were common as were Spanish sparrows-I tried to get pics of the sparrows-the easiest spot would have been the hotel pool where they came to drink but it would not have been wise to have been toting a 400mm lens where there was a lot of bared flesh…..which leads neatly to…..Hooters, Playas De Las AmericasI did not realise until I got to Tenerife and read a BF report that a Tricoloured heron was present-and as it was only 10km from where I stayed so I thought it positively rude not to have dropped by and say hello. For some reason the bird has chosen to stay outside Hooters (an American chain where the food is served by unfeasibly chested young women and describes itself as delightfully tacky yet unrefined-you get the drift) in Playa de Las Americas-the busiest, most touristy part of the coast. Maybe he just likes the girls. So a Sunday morning at 7.30 found me getting lost in the one way system. The setting was a bit surreal and was awash with returning clubbers, comatose drunks and enough discarded bottles, cans and fast food wrappers to disgrace Rose Street in Edinburgh on a Saturday night. Even more surreal were the looks I got and the responses when I asked for directions to Hooters-“eh, I don’t think it’ll be open mate”(subtext you old pervert). But I got there and the bird flew in right on cue to the lido just up from Hooters.</blockquote>

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