cliftonbirding: Tenerife

Just back from a 10 day break on Tenerife, a sunshine Holiday with Dawn but I managed a bit of birding, as per usual there were not many birds around the resort, Playa de las Americas, the commonest being Collared Doves and Canary Islands Chiffchaffs, a few Plain Swifts were seen around the Hotel most evenings although the only Hirundines were a couple of Swallows through one evening, also a few Spanish Sparrows and Monk Parakeets plus the Canary Islands races of Kestrel and Grey Wagtail were seen, a lot of the coast was rocky and a few Waders were seen around the rock pools although nothing out of the ordinary but the biggest surprise and my first new bird of the holiday was a Barbary Falcon that drifted over the resort one evening, I also got a Butterfly tick when a Monarch flew past the Hotel balcony. I took a Boat trip out from Los Christianos one afternoon, got really good views of Bottlenose Dolphins and Pilot Whales plus loads of Cory's Shearwaters but no hoped for Petrels, lots of Yellow Legged Gulls as usual and a few Sandwich Terns plus loads of Little Egrets perched on some tall cliffs (almost thought they were Gannets at first). The next day I took a trip that went up to Mt Teide then dropped back down to the North of the Island and ended up at a little village called Masca in a hidden valley, it was a good trip with some fantastic scenery but as is usual on these trips I didn’t get a lot of time for birding and even though we stopped at the Las Lajas picnic site, the best place for Blue Chaffinch I failed to see one, highlights were Spectacled Warbler and Berthelot's Pipit, plus Canary Blue Butterfly at Mt Teide, Sardinian Warbler and the Canary Islands race of Blue Tit at Santiago del Teide where we stopped for lunch and Canary at Masca. On the last afternoon I caught the bus over to Los Abrigos a bit further along the coast then walked across to the nearby Golf del Sur complex, as I had read in a few trip reports it is an excellent area for Barbary Partridge and I flushed several small parties giving me tick number two but apart from a couple of Spectacled Warblers there was nothing else even the Golf Course surprisingly held very little, a Cattle Egret wandered around a small pond there and there was also a small flock of Fulvous Whistling Ducks but as they were accompanied by a Bar Headed Goose I think they were a bit suspect.