Day 7: Quality birding

24th of July:

Photographing a Houbara Bustard was one of our most-wanted wishes for this trip. So we give it a try this morning. We visit the site where we saw the Houbara's our first night. Whilst we are on the way we already see a Houbara Bustard passing the highway, on the plains a few km south of Guatiza! What a start! The bird flies right over our car, fantastic! As on most mornings, there is a good cloud cover, which keeps the heat waves away and provides good light conditions for photographing.

While we're driving on a dirt track I see a large bird circling. As the light is not that good yet, I first think it's a  Raven but it turns out to be a nice female Barbary Falcon! 

As we drive on we suddenly discover a Houbara Bustard walking in front of the car! The bird sees us and walks away but it's not shy and starts foraging at a good range! Our first close encounter!

Houbara Bustard (Chlamydotis undulata fuerteventurae)

Next stop is Haría where we visit the cultivated fields south of the village. From Haría we walk a path towards the north (this path eventually goes up into the Barranco). As we'd observed before, there are many Spectacled Warblers around and we are offered some good photo oppertunities:

Spectacled Warblers (Sylvia conspictilla)

We see 5 Fuerteventura Blue Tits. These show really well, just like the warblers:

Fuerteventura Blue Tit (Cyanistes degener)

When we're almost back at the car we see large panic amognst the Feral/Rock Pigeons. It doesn't take long for us to see what's the cause: a (presumably) pair of Barbary Falcons is hunting them! We don't see if they have any succes as they disseappear to the cliffs after a while. 

We drive back through the Barranco the Chafaris again, where we see another 4 Fuerteventura Blue Tits. Also we observe 4 different Eleonora's Falcons at the same spot where we saw the one the day before. They're hunting above a small reservoir of water in a corner of the barranco. They're hunting on dragonflies and showing well. Great raptors! Later on the photos we see that one of the falcon's is ringed, where would this bird come from??

Bad light... 

And in the mean time an Egyptian Vulture passed by:

Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus majorensis)

In the early evening we visit Jameos del Agua. A cave with shallow water. It's a really nice place with the endemic Blind Crabs, that occur in the water in the cave. We see tens of them in the water, really special. A must to visit! A Fuerteventura Blue Tit is observed in the gardens there and over a 1000 Cory's Shearwaters pass by.

 One of the Blind Crabs

Fuerteventura Blue Tit (Cyanistes degener)

A Grey Heron  is observed flying over the highway near Guatiza on our way back.

What what what what a great day!

Day 6: On top of de Risco

23rd of July:

Another walk was made this morning, this time we didn't pick the wrong track:) We drove up to the Hermita, on top of the Risco de Famara. These are the cliffs you see when you are in Famara. But you can also get on top of them! From Los Valles you drive to Los Nuevos where you come near the edge of the cliffs. We parked the car near the Hermita and got out of the car to make the walk. First we enjoyed the view from there. The wind was very strong, it blew my sunglasses off... at least 6 bft.

 View to the south

 Famara 

 Tammo in the wind!

And myself

We started our walk, and walked parralel to the cliffs in a northern direction. Our walk would lead us to another viewing point (even prettier than near the hermita).

As we walked we came by a weather station, which amongs others, measures the volcano activity. Almost everywhere on the island, you can see this building, located on top of the cliffs. During our walk we saw Linnets, Turtle Doves, 3 Lesser Short-toed Larks, 1 Hoopoe, Stone Curlew, Spectacled Warbler and near the very nice viewing point we had two Egyptian Vultures soaring below us, patrolling the cliffs. Two migrating Red-rumped Swallows were seen here as well. Mum and sis went back to the car, and my dad and I went on to Haría, where the girls would pick us up again with the car. We descended down to Haría through a very beautiful barranco, probably the greenest on the island.

In the cultivated fields, just south of Haría (and at the end of the barranco) we had our first Fuerteventura Blue Tits, some 20 Canaries, many Spectacled Warblers and a few Turtle Doves. Certainly a spot to come back to some time later!

In Haría we had some drinks and then went home again. We passed Barranco the Chafaris (Tabayesco) and here we found a light morph Eleonora's Falcon hunting! Quick stop with the car delivered us good views.

Here's one of them:

Eleonora's Falcon (Falco eleonorae), light morph 

In the evening we did some seawatching east of Orzola, resulting in 1500+ Cory's Shearwaters, but also 5 Bulwer's Petrels. The observations of the Bulwers were however, very brief and quite distant, as they were  dissappearing behind the waves all the time, making it extremely difficult to follow them. Near the harbour of Orzola we see a dark morph Eleonora's Falcon flying over the sea, probably going to its nesting colony north of Lanzarote. Furthermore we see a Little Egret and two Redshanks.

Day 5: A cream-coloured evening

22nd of July:

Another day on Lanzarote! After some good breakfast we left the apartment with all of us. We wanted to do some hiking in the neighbourhood of Guatiza. We searched for the Barranco de Teneguime. We thought we'd found the right track and started the walk. Later it turned out it was a track walking just parralel to the Barranco, so we were walking on the hills on the egde of the Barranco. We saw some Ravens and apart from the Berthelot's Pipits that are always everywhere there was not much seen. After the short hike we drove to Los Cocotheros, a small village along the coast, east of Guatiza. We checked the saltpans there but there were no waders or such thing present. The birds simply just weren't around. Around noon we decided to go Jardin de Cactus. This is a wonderful garden full of catcuses and other plants, very impressive. Since there was water, there were also some nice birds around. We found at least 4 Melodious Warblers here, a nice surprise, as this is, as far as I know, not a common migrant here, and four together is a good score then! There were also flocks of Spanish Sparrows and the flyover of two Bee-eaters was a good one!

Jardin de Cactus

 Spanish Sparrow (Passer hispanicus), male

Melodius Warbler (Hippolais polygotta)

In the afternoon some snorkling and swimming was done in the sea near Costa Teguise, resulting in the observations of some really nice fishes, such as Lizard Fishes. In the evening my dad and I went to El Jable again. We went to the same areas as before. Soon we had 10+ Stone Curlews:

Stone Curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus insularum)

Other observations were at least 7 Hoopoes:

Hoopoes (Upupa epops)

A nice Kestrel of the ssp dacotiae:

Common Kestrel (Falco tinniculus dacotiae)

We knocked on the door on this Southern Grey Shrike was at home:

Southern Grey Shrike (Lanius meriodinalis koenigi), the 2cy bird

And here a recording of the bird singing/calling:

 Southern Grey Shrike ssp koenigi, El Jable, Lanzarote by Fmeijer 

But best of all, was the group of 12 Cream-coloured Coursers we came across. My dad first heard them calling in a patch nearby. Then a few took off but the rest stayed and showed really well. I screwed up a bit with my camera settings, just when was close to the car.. you can guess, my dad has perfect images of that moment!

Cream-coloured Courser (Cursor cursorius)

El Jable, with the Famara cliffs on the background.

Day 4: Timanfaya PN

21st of July:

This morning we set off to Timafaya National Park. We had to be there around 9:00 to be there before the large crowds would arrive. We drove with our own car to the restaurant of the park and there we had to wait to get in a bus. This bus would drive us around the park. With a large bus we left the parking lot and drove on really tiny roads with sharp bends. Thumbs up for the driving skills of the drivers! We drove past some steep slopes..

 The park and its parking lot

 Miles of lava

 Some volcanic rocks

View with the bus

 A geiser (a man with a bucket threw water in the hole, just to spoil it for you, haha)

 Very very hot ground...

Berthelot's Pipits didn't seem to care much. 

Afterwards we went to El Golfo for a meal. We stopped at the salinas of Janubio. Here we saw some 20 Black-winged Stilts but there was not much else.

Salinas de Janubio

 On the shore of El Golfo my dad and I spend some time photographing the Atlantic Yellow-legged Gulls, of which there were plenty around. There were hundreds of Cory's Shearwaters off shore, at least 100 flying by every 5 minutes.

 1cy

 1cy

 2nd summer, 3cy

 Adult

Another adult of the Atlantic Yellow-legged Gulls (Larus michahellis atlantis)

Day 3: A bright yellow eye looking at you..

20th of July:


My dad and I departed early this morning and headed to the plains of El Jable, west of Teguise. We had our hopes set on Houbara's, Cream-coloured Coursers, Stone Curlews and so on. We arrive at the southern part (just north of the LZ-30) around 7:15 and start to drive the dirt tracks going through the plains. Soon we see two Stone Curlews taking off in a field next to us. A bit further down the track another one appears close to the car, our first close encounter with a Stone Curlew here... and we didn't know yet what had to come! We stop the car and I do some scanning on my right with my binoculars, resulting in the find of 3 Cream-coloured Coursers. That went rather smoothly! The light is bad but I manage to get a recordshot. We were following a track to the west and have now turned right to the north. We drive on till we come upon some kind of farm, with some dirty ponds filled with goat shit, or something similar, haha. We come across many (100+) Lesser Short-toed Larks and Stone Curlews are no unusual appearance anymore with +4 seen here. They are very very cooperative and come very close, despite the very well-pronounced colour of our car: red.

 One of the Cream-coloured Coursers (Cursor cursorius); poor shot

 Stone Curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus insularum)

 Lesser Short-toed Lark (Calandrella rufescens polatzeki); too bad that this bird just posed wrong for us..

Another Lesser Short-toed Lark

After we've had our photographic moment we continued northwards. Not much later we locate a Houbara Bustard to the right of us. The bird shows really well and we have nice views through our scope. We also locate three more Houbara Bustards north-east of there. The location is as follows: coming from Teguise you take the LZ-30 to Mozaga, on the roundabout you take the LZ-402 to Famara. Just afther the KM 2 sign a dirt track goes off the road to the left. Drive 500m and start the scan. From here we had nice views of at least three birds from a reasonable distance. The light was still very good so there were no heatwaves.

 This is where we saw the three Houbara's.

Tammo watching the bustards.

The clouds that were present in the early morning had moved away, and the sun appeared instead. Near the ''farm'' we see our first Hoopoe, Cattle Egret and we discovered a territorial Southern Grey Shrike.

Southern Grey Shrike (Lanius meridionalis koenigi); the bird shows a three old outer primaries and a few old inner secondaries, all very bleached/worn. I have no experience in ageing them, I'll dig in to that sometime;)

We are back on time in the apartment and have a nice meal at noon. In the afternoon we go to Famara for a hike. 

Risco de Famara

The almost two hour lasting walk brings us along the foot of the cliffs. We see our first Ravens soaring above the cliffs and Tammo gets all the credit for discovering a hunting Egyptian Vulture.

 Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus majorensis); this endemic ssp has a more rufous-tinged colouration making the birds look very ''dirty''.

The family walking down at the foot of the cliffs.

Back at Costa Teguise I see a probable Alpine Swift in the evening. From the driving car is see a large swift flying together with some Plain Swifts, too bad the bird dissappears immediatly.