We had booked another whale watching trip this morning, but sadly it had to be rescheduled because of high winds. So we took the opportunity to track down my one remaining target, arguably the most important; the Tenerife Blue Chaffinch. This was in the pine forests below the volcano and the lava fields. Although there were a few locations where people seemed to see them, the Las Lajas campsite of the Corona Forestal National Park seemed to be the most reliable so that is where we searched.
All the intel I had
suggested the bird was very common here. That was not our experience, and
despite an hour exploring around the car park and campsite we found no sign.
There were a few birds of interest, including the local flavour of Great
Spotted Woodpecker and African Blue Tit, but no Blue Chaffinch.
Laura suggested we
go for a short hike, taking the trail heading east from the campsite, and
eventually on this trail we managed to find the bird. In the end we had three individuals,
two males and a female, and the male especially showed phenomenally well,
perching right next to us in a young conifer. Sadly I was a little slow on the
camera so I didn’t manage any photos of this moment, and was generally restricted
to photos when the birds were perched above us in the trees. Still a superb
bird and a great one to see.
In the afternoon, after
returning to the AirBnB for lunch, we hiked the hills above the town of Tamaimo.
This was not for birding at all, but was still an enjoyable walk and obviously it
was not possible to escape from the birds. At the top of the mountain we found
two Berthelots Pipits, and at the bottom there were a few Sardinian Warblers.
This was also the only place where we found Tenerife Wall Lizard, which we had
expected to be common.
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