Birding In Lanzarote January 2020

A frequent holiday we make in January is to Lanzarote and whilst it is not a birding holiday as such, we do try to see a few birds and always take a run out to El Jable, the “desert area” in the top half of the island. Over the two weeks we got a relatively modest thirty-four species of birds but a few of the ones we do get are very special.

Spanish Sparrows and Collared Doves were all over our hotel and the beach was full of Yellow-legged Gulls. Little Egrets were fairly common in the watery areas and Cattle Egrets in the countryside. Berthelot’s Pipits were commonplace throughout the island but less common were Trumpeter Finches and Lesser Short-toed Larks

At the Salinas de Janubio we got the Canarian version of Ravens in the car park and the usual birds on, or around, the water included Black-necked Grebe, Ruddy Shelduck , Black-winged Stilt , Common Sandpiper , Greenshank, Redshank, Sanderling, Turnstones and we even got a single Whimbrel.

The least common birds, of course, were in the desert area – “El Jable”. We went there on our own one day and walked a bit into the interior and got very good views of a good number of Cream-coloured Coursers. A couple of days later, we went on our usual tour with Carmen Portella Ernest who is the director of Eco-Insider who has driven us several times. We were joined at the Monumento al Campesino in San Bartolomé car park by a couple, Keith and Cath (or was it Kath Hunt before going on the following route through the desert.

We spent much longer in the desert than we had dome previously as Carmen seemed determined to find displaying Houbara Bustards. We didn’t ever find any displaying and, indeed, only found a couple of them and we didn’t even get out of the land rover, which was a bit disappointing.|There were countless numbers of Ravens throughout the desert.and we managed a single Hoopoe

We got endless views of Bertholet’s Pipits and Southern Grey Shrikes but only a couple of Lesser Short-toed Larks. We got good views of several Cream-coloured Coursers and we got a few close Stone Curlew, but again perhaps not as close as last year. Still they were very nice to see. In the more vegetated partsof the desert (the little forest) where there are numerous small shrubs, we got Trumpeter Finch, Linnets and Spectacled Warbler. So all in all, a pretty good morning out.

Between El Jable, the Salinas and Playa Blanca in general we got most of the species for the holiday but there was one special bird that was a life tick for us and, almost unbelievably,had evaded us on all previous visits – Island Canary, A couple of them were bobbing around and singing in a tree in a field just near Cesar Manrique’s studio-home in Haria. In the same tree we also got African Blue Tit so these were rather surprising extras for us. As a matter of interest, there were a lot of birds around there and in the gardens of Manrique’s studio itself.

List of Species seen in Lanzarote in January 2020