Tenerife

Tenerife is a spectacular place.  Avoid the southern sprawl, string vests, and soggy chips, and head for the hills.  For the hills hold beauty that a package holiday urchin can only begin to dream of while staring benignly into the spittle of an empty pint glass.  Jump on a plane, head south for four hours, and take it all in.

El Teide National park, the open road stretches out into the distance, squeezed in by the volcanic backdrop of monoliths and hardened rocky screes, that were once molten, but now remain frozen in time.  The deep blue added to the beauty of the place.

This is Poris de Abona, a quiet fishing village located just 30 minutes north along the TF-1 from Tenerife-South airport.  This is where we spent five nights, and it was a charming place, overlooking the eastern seas and free from artificial light that illuminated the night-sky.

The island has some interesting birds, hardly overwhelmed by variety or large numbers, but interesting nonetheless.  At Las Lajas, African Blue Tit and Atlantic Canary were easy to find, as were the Blue Chaffinch that shuffled around the picnic tables and the pines above.  The scrub also held the teneriffae form of the Goldcrest looking somewhat different with their conspicuous pale lores and eye-ring.  A couple of local Great Spotted Woodpecker flew through the woodland.

The birds were easy to see here, it can get busy at weekends but just wander round and you can easily find quieter areas away from the crowds.

Berthelot's Pipit were relatively common.  This one was taken from the balcony of the apartment.  From here over breakfast, I would watch small groups of Cory's Shearwater drift past as the sun rose in the distance.

The views were fantastic.

Then there were the Pigeons.  Those bloody Pigeons!  Well one was relatively easy to find at the La Gomera pull-in, that felt a bit weird, staring up a cliff-edge by a busy main road waiting for a White-tailed Laurel Pigeon to emerge from an uninspiring backdrop of broken ledges and fragmented trees.  Emerge it did, sitting on top of an old dead tree, scoped to perfection.  It soon disappeared, then so did we.

Bolle's Pigeon however, proved more challenging.  We remained faithful to Erjos.  Despite a lot of the Laurel forest having been burnt away, we trekked the paths close to the (dried-up) pools but it didn't feel right here.  We spent a couple of hours in the warm unrelenting sun.  It was November, but the rays were surprisingly piercing.

Without any luck here, we turned our attention to the wooded area a little further down the road.  By the time we had left the site, a total of four had been seen.  It was a relief, but it was also a Pigeon.

It was fun driving up and down the island, taking on the twisty roads that rose up into the coolness of the mountains.  The beaches at La Tajita and Playa de las Teresitas were beautiful, not to mention the warm embrace of the winter sun.