30 Jan 26 - ORCA Canaries Cruise - A Tour Of Lanzarote

On our second day in the Canaries, we approached the port of Arrecife on Lanzarote. We were tied up in the half-light, so, there was no chance of any early morning surveying. There weren't any Birds I was keen to look for on the island and therefore, my plan was to book onto one of the ship organised coach tours.

Sandwich Tern: Chris and I were watching Arrecife's bay from the cabin's balcony and suggesting potential species we might see. Top of the list was Sandwich Tern and within five minutes, there were half a dozen flying around the bay

The wreck of the Telamon: Back in 1981, she started flooding on a trip from Ivory Coast to Thessaloniki with a cargo of logs. She was beached by the port and the fuel oil and logs were offloaded. After breaking her back in a storm, she could no longer go to sea. In recent years, she has been partially dismantled, but that work stopped a couple of years ago. Conveniently, the Greek company who owned her no longer exists and so won't have to pay for the clean up

Fortunately, there was room on one of the coach tours around the island. The first stop was the delightful small tourist town of Teguise, which was the capital of Lanzarote from the early 15th Century until the capital moved to Arrecife in 1852. As we were travelling around the island, our guide said that there was a famous artist, Cesar Manrique, who lives on the island until his death in 1992. He worked hard to convince the locals to paint their houses while to revive an old tradition on the island. As these photos show he was very successful in this regard.

The small tourist town of Teguise

The old church was at the centre of Teguise

The square around the old church

Another view of the square

The buildings have a very Moorish look to them: This isn't surprising as while the Canaries were first mentioned by the Romans, they were first settled by Moors from 999 AD. In the early 14th Century, a Portuguese ship captained by Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello arrived. Within a few years, the locals were being captured and sold into Spanish slavery. The Spanish started to settle in the Canaries from the start of the 15th Century. Early settlers continued with the building styles of the first inhabitants as the houses were easy to build, with flat roofs which were designed to channel water into underground storage

An old street

This old 15th Century church tithe barn is now the local bank

The bank has retained many of the old structural features of the building

I really like how many of the building stones stand out from the lime mortar: Cacti and Succulents were often replacing more typical garden plants on the island

A statue celebrating the local musical style of dancing with a tambourine

Collared Dove: This was one of the Bird species around the town

Collared Dove

Santa Barbara Castle dominated the hill next to the town: This started as a simple 15th Century watch tower, but it was converted into a proper fortress by 1576

Having had a good wander around the town, it was time to move on. The next stop was the beach next to the surfing beach village of Caleta de Famara, which had excellent views of bumpy sand dunes and some stunning hills. It was little more than a quick photo stop, but there was time to look around the village and photograph a couple of Spanish Sparrows I had seen.

A nice looking cafe: Everything in the village seem to be surfing related with a surf school, surf shop, surfing hotel and this cafe which presumably welcomes surfers

There were a few hardy surfers in the waves next to the village

The bay was very scenic

There were these little hummock dunes behind the beach

Spanish Sparrow: Male. The is the nominate hispaniolensis subspecies which occurs in Cape Verde, the Canaries, Madeira, Southern Europe & North Africa

Spanish Sparrow: Male

All too soon we were back on the coach to head to the Southern end of the island.

Wherever you go on Lanzarote, there are these small volcanic hills

Monumento al Campesino by local artist Cesar Manrique: To me, he was clearly more successful at convincing the locals to paint their houses white, than at his sculptures

The drive took us through the Parque Natural de Los Volcanes and Timanfaya National Park: Albeit we missed the best parts of the area

Another volcanic area

These walled hollows in the volcanic soil provided to be good ways to grow grape vines on the island: The walls and hollows provide shelter and a way to collect and retain any moisture on this arid island

Our final stop was an Aloe Vera museum. To be honest, this felt more like the obligatory visit to a Turkish Carpet shop where the guide stops hoping you buy a carpet you don't need. I opted to have a walk along the road, rather than look around the small Aloe Vera exhibition and shop.

The highlight of my walk was this Cacti and Succulent garden by a large house

Finally, it was time to head back to the ship for a late lunch. As I was waiting for the coach to depart from the Aloe Vera museum, I saw two large Falcons circling over the nearby hill, but there wasn't time for a photo. This subspecies was formally split as Barbary Falcons, but it has now been relegated to a subspecies of Peregrine.

Our guide say that there had been more rainfall than normal on Lanzarote: Consequently, there were lots of plants appearing where it is normally barren, including this lovely display of purple flowers

We left at 17:00 as planned and there for time for ninety minutes or so of surveying from the top deck before it got dark. I managed to see a two single unidentified Dolphins in that time: one of which was probably an Atlantic Spotted Dolphin. It had been an enjoyable day and I spent a bit of time booking a hire car for our next destination of La Palma. I will cover the in the next Blog Post.

This was our first good sunset at sea

29 Jan 26 - ORCA Canaries Cruise - Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch

After a few days of tough seas, we finally met the Las Palmas pilot boat in the late morning. We stopped surveying when we met the pilot boat and headed for lunch. Just as we finished eating, the Captain announced the ship had cleared customs, the gangplank had been fitted and we could go ashore. I was ready to go as I had booked a hired car for the day, but now I only had the afternoon. Fortunately, I didn't have to rush to return the car as we were spending the evening in the port. It was a two mile walk to the car hire company, which was about the nearest firm I could find. It proved to be a team effort with three of the staff working to copy my documents and complete the paperwork and a fourth member of staff who brought the car out to me. It was time to head to the hills. Once you get out of the main towns, there are a lot of winding roads into the hills. Sometimes I was able to drive over a couple of hundred metres without having to go around a corner. Some of the roads were especially narrow, which was fine as I do a lot of driving on my local back roads. But I don't expect to go around a bend and find an articulated lorry heading towards me. Twice that happened and I had to reverse, once around a blind bend. Fortunately, there wasn't a lot of traffic on these roads.

The upper roads are narrow and constantly winding around the hills

After about an hour of driving, I reached the high Pine forests. I had been worried that these might have been covered in cloud, but I drove through the cloud and into bright sunshine on my way up. I was heading for a camping ground in the forests called Bailico, which eBird had indicated was a good spot for the Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch.

There was some lovely Pine forests around the camping ground

A close up of the lava peak in the background

The Pine forests seemed to have good numbers of Great Spotted Woodpeckers and African Blue Tits. After about ten minutes of looking, I found a nice male Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch.

Great Spotted Woodpecker: This is the thanneri subspecies which is restricted to Gran Canaria. The only other subspecies on the Canaries occurs on Tenerife, so presumably it is a species that prefers the Pine forests on the Canaries

African Blue Tit: This is the hedwigae subspecies which is restricted to Gran Canaria. It is one of five subspecies on the Canaries, with a further two subspecies in North Africa

Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch: This monotypic endemic is restricted to the Pine forests of Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch: It is considered to be one of the rarest breeding birds in the Western Palearctic, with a world population around four hundred and thirty individuals in 2025. However, a captive-raised translocation project in recent years has shown a positive increase in the number of breeding pairs on the island

After seeing the Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch, I still had a reasonable amount of light left in the afternoon. I decided to head down to some of the lower Laurel forests on the North side of the island. At one point, I took a wrong turning and due to the narrow roads, I couldn't find a safe place to quickly turn around. In the end, this was good as I saw some spectacular scenery before I found a turning place.

There was a great view as I exited from the Pine forests

Owning a company making crash barriers will keep you busy on Gran Canaria

Mount Teide on Tenerife sticking up above the clouds

After a twenty minute of so drive, I had reached the Laurel forests around Valsendero. I was hoping to see some White-tailed Laurel Pigeons flying around. This is one of the two endemic Pigeons on the Canaries. I found a viewpoint over the Laurel forest, but I only had about twenty minutes before I needed to depart to return the car. Fortunately, it wasn't a Tick as I had seen all the endemic Canary species on my visit in 1994. That was until Blue Chaffinch was split into Tenerife Blue Chaffinch and Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch. I did get to see a few African Blue Tits and Canary Islands Chaffinches.

The lower Laurel forests

African Blue Tit: A couple of African Blue Tits appeared in response to my pishing

African Blue Tit: The second individual. This subspecies has a darker crown than most of the other subspecies

Canary Islands Chaffinch: This is the bakeri subspecies which is restricted to Gran Canaria. It is one of four subspecies on the Canaries

Canary Islands Chaffinch

The Canaries are unique in the Western Palearctic in having more than one species of Chaffinches on some islands. There are the two species of Blue Chaffinches which occur in the high Pine forests of Tenerife and Gran Canaria. I'm assuming this is due to the Chaffinches arriving and adapting to live in the Pine forests which covered the islands in cooler periods of the Earth's history. As the Earth warmed up these Pine Forests retreated to the higher and cooler parts of the highest islands. They eventually evolved due to isolation into the two species of Blue Chaffinch. Assuming the ancestor of the Blue Chaffinch occurred on the other islands, they disappeared when the Pine trees couldn't survive on the lower, more arid islands or were out-competed by the Laurel forests. Much later, Chaffinches must have re-arrived from North Africa and again evolved into the widespread Canary Islands Chaffinch which inhabits the lowland Laurel forests.

Canary Islands Chaffinch: A duller individual

I'm basing my Chaffinch arrival theory on what I can remember reading about Spangled Drongo species on Sulawesi in Indonesia. Most of the Indonesian islands only have one species of Spangled Drongo. But Sulawesi has two species, which are separated by altitude. The understanding was the high elevation species arrived first and they adapted to live in the higher elevation forest. At a later date, the second species arrived and colonised the lowlands.

Today's hire car was this sleek-looking Peugeot 2008: Not as nice to drive as the Santander BMW 520, but a bit more practical on the narrower roads

Many of the properties were built on steep hills: However, this one appears to be built inside a cave in a cliff face

All too soon, I had to head back to Las Palmas, which was still about an hour's drive away.

A view over the lowlands

An impressive church on the drive back to Las Palmas

Fortunately, the car hire office was still open when I returned and they were good enough to drop me back near the ship. The ship had laid on a buffet and entertainment by the swimming pool for the evening.

It was possible to have entertainment around the swimming pool, as we were in port for the evening

The ship's resident band and dancers worked well together

The Spirit of Discovery departed for our next destination of Lanzarote in the late evening.