Tenerife weekend, Tenerife, Sunday 26th February 2012

For our last day in Tenerife (it went so fast!) we had planned to see both the White-tailed Laurel Pigeon and Blue Chaffinch. We headed first then to Erjos. But try as we could we didn't find any laurel forest locally. I wonder if the bird is going to be around long, that being the case, as this was one of two sites on the whole island and it is endemic...

We walked into the nature reserve, enjoying the weird almost Martian landscape on the walk up:

Even the local Blue Tit is a much darker bird than ours, surely again another species?

Here another Tenerife Kinglet:

Still no sign of the Laurel forest but we were very pleasantly surprised to encounter Blue Chaffinch on our ascent, we expected to see this species much later in the day and at another place altogether:

This species is both endemic and rare, we were lucky to see the female too:

Another unexpected encounter, a juvenile Red-footed Falcon:

You can see how plants get established even in a mostly barren landscape:

Leading to a habitat like this:

We got about 3 miles up the trail to basically lava fields with occasional greenery before heading back down:

The Blue Chaffinch seemed determined to be seen. here alighting above us and singing:

From the walk we drove up to the top of the island and the lava fields and volcano atop Tenerife:

The landscape is truly spectacular:

As the time we had left shortened we headed back down to the coast, this time the East coast for a coffee, seeing Spanish Sparrow for the first time on the trip:



And last but not least, Berthelot's Pipit:



It was a brief visit but we both enjoyed it and made the most of it. I think that's probably it for the Canary Islands now...