Fuerteventura - 2

During our week on Fuerteventura we were based at Caleta de Fuste, a tourist resort situated only about 10km from the airport and no more than an hour’s drive from any of the birding sites we planned to visit.  It proved to be a good choice.

We had prepared for the trip by reading various tour reports published on the internet and by talking to friends who had been to the island.  We took with us Finding Birds in The Canaries by Dave Gosney and A Birdwatchers' Guide to the Canary Islands by David Collins and Tony Clarke both of which proved helpful.

We particularly wanted to see ten species that would be new for us: Fuerteventura Chat, Houbara Bustard, Plain Swift, Barbary Falcon, Barbary Partridge, African Blue Tit, Berthelot’s Pipit, Canary Islands Chiffchaff, Trumpeter Finch and Atlantic Canary.  In the event, we managed to find nine of them.  Some sources suggest that the Canary doesn’t even occur on Fuerteventura and we might now be inclined to agree with that!

We also wanted to try and photograph Cream-coloured Courser, Black-bellied Sandgrouse and Lesser Short-toed Lark.

 Cream-coloured Courser

 Black-bellied Sandgrouse

Lesser Short-toed Lark - subspecies polatzeki

We went twice to the reservoir at Los Molinos, where Ruddy Shelducks outnumbered all other birds put together!  We counted about 200 of them.  Unfortunately, the high water level resulted in very little shoreline for waders but this was one of the places we saw Fuerteventura Chat and Egyptian Vulture and we also had good views of the dacotiae race of Common Kestrel and the insularum race of Common Buzzard.

 Los Molinos Reservoir

 Ruddy Shelducks

Common Kestrel - subspecies dacotiae

Egyptian Vultures - subspecies majorensis

We made two visits to the plains around Tindaya and La Oliva.  On the first occasion we saw Houbara Bustard, Cream-coloured Courser and Black-bellied Sandgrouse.  They all took a bit of finding and the birding was ‘hard work’ but we enjoyed it so much that we went back there on our last day simply for a second helping!

Houbara Bustard - subspecies fuertaventurae

The water level at the Las Peñitas reservoir was also very high and it was hardly worth going there.  However, on the walk along the mainly dry river bed we did see a Grey Wagtail and our first African Blue Tit.  Nearby we spent some time in the attractive little town of Betancuria.  Founded in 1404 this was the original capital of the Kingdom of the Canary Islands and while there we slipped into ‘tourist mode’ for a short while.  It was also there that we had our best views of African Blue Tit and we also saw Canary Islands Chiffchaff and Monarch butterflies.

 Iglesia Catedral de Santa Maria de Betancuria

 African Blue Tit - subspecies degener

 Monarch Butterfly

More from us about Fuerteventura to come shortly...

Cream-coloured Courser

A Cream-coloured Courser (Cursorius cursor) that was first seen at Alvor here in the Algarve on Friday, 8th March was thankfully still present there this morning.  Presumably it has been deterred from trying to find its way back to North Africa by the consistently awful weather that has been suffered here since even before it arrived.

June managed to see it on its second day, making the trip to Alvor with Ray Tipper while Peter was in Guatemala.  When we went together on Thursday (Peter’s first day back) to look for the bird, there were five or six feral dogs running all over the area where it had been and it was nowhere to be found.  There had also been a change in the wind direction and we wrongly assumed that it had gone.  The truth is that we didn’t have much time available for a search as we needed to be back in Tavira to take delivery of a bag that hadn’t made it the previous day on to the flight from Miami to Madrid!

And that was that until news came yesterday that the bird had been re-located and only a short distance from where it had been seen originally.  So, in spite of what turned out to be an accurate forecast for early fog and rain, we went back this morning and quickly located it.  We saw it well through the Swarovski ‘scope but there was no question of getting close to it and the quality of the photograph tells its own story, both about the distance and about the light conditions.

There have been only six previous records of Cream-coloured Courser in Portugal, three of them in the Algarve including the most recent, which was at Ludo in April 2001.  However, there have been breeding attempts in recent years nearby in Spain.