During the unusually hot and windy week of 21-28th April based at Costa Teguise, I managed to have a full day birding in the north of the island and daily short looks in the vicinity of the town.

I used Clark and Collins as my main guide supplemented by other trip reports

For the full day trip I followed Clark and Collins and visited  El Jable plain, the Mirador de Haria and the Guinate viewpoint of the Riscos de Farmara.

I was at El Jable by 8.30 am and immediately saw two distant Houbara bustards, then a close pair of stone curlews and then three more bustards, one of which was sitting very close to a track, although left when I stopped the car. Stacks of lesser short toed larks were present plus kestrel and a female Hen or Montague’s harrier.

At the Mirador de Haria, I drove up the track shown in Clark and Collins and was surrounded by bee eaters. Parking at the first bend, I walked up a little valley and saw two canaries, a blue tit, a turtle dove and a few Berthelot’s pipits.

From the spectacular Guinate viewpoint, I had a couple of fleeting falcon views, which I assume were Barbarys but could have been early Eleanora arrivals, and a raven.

Walking out to the Castillo de San Gabriel from the Arricefe waterfront there were cattle egrets, going to and from their nesting sites on the waterfront, little egrets, Kentish and grey plovers, turnstones, a greenshank and a curlew.

I asked for and was given permission to walk on the buggy paths around Tachiche golf course, where there were numerous Barbary partridges and some hoopoes on the greens, a number of linnets, plenty of Berthelot’s pipits, a golden oriole, a spotted flycatcher. a couple of Bonnelli’s warblers.

Finally, walking along the Costa Teguise seafront, I found trumpeter finches, spotted and pied flycatchers, a whinchat, willow warblers, a pair of yellow wagtails (very dark head on male), lots of Corey’s shearwaters (on an especially windy day), sandwich terns, common sandpipers, dunlin, grey, ringed and Kentish plovers (with young), a few house martins and one sand martin.

All over the place there were swallows. Spanish sparrows, collared doves, swift spp. great grey shrikes and yellow-legged gulls.