Day 2:
Awaking bright and early the
next morning for our second day exploring Fuerteventura, our first point of
call was a visit to Mareta de Fimapaire – a dried up pool which was apparently
a good location for our main target of the day – Laughing Dove.
Arriving on the
muddy clay tracks, several Yellow-legged and Lesser Black-backed Gulls milled
around the last remains of the water source, joined by a further 5 Ruddy
Shelducks.
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Yellow-legged Gull |
Once again it was a surprise to see them away from any large water
bodies, looking out of place on the sun-baked dry earth. As with El Jarde, the
ground was covered with a carpet of Lesser Short-toed Larks, their upbeat chattering
filling the air, but too distant to really scrutinise whether anything rarer
from Africa had become mixed in.
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Mareta de Fimapaire |
Travelling slowly along the
track, movement in one of the thorny shrubs revealed our first Spectacled
Warbler of the trip, a colourful male that was later joined by the much drabber
female, keeping low to the ground and scurrying like mice between the clumps of
vegetation.
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Spectacled Warbler |
Mareta de Fimapaire turned out to be our best site for this species
on Fuerteventura and we found several males perching out in the open during our
visit. Not a lifer for us after seeing the recent Burnham Overy bird in
Norfolk, it was nevertheless enjoyable to see them in their natural range.
Stopping off in a driveway and
scanning the much lusher vegetation for a sign of our target Laughing Doves, a
male Fuerteventura Chat popped in to view, using the thick fleshy cactus plants
as lookout points for any invertebrate prey below. Several Southern Grey
Shrikes also gave their harsh calls from the shrubs while Berthelot’s Pipits
fed along the stone walls.
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Berthelot's Pipit |
Suddenly Alex alerted me to
two dark coloured doves flying past the car, just getting enough on them to
safely identify them as our target Laughing Doves, but unfortunately me just catching
the tail end of them as they flew behind a nearby house and out of sight.
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The house in question! |
Staking it out and wondering whether the arrival of the house’s owner by car
may flush them back in to view, our efforts were rewarded as the pair hurtled
back in front of us and in to a neighbouring garden, settling down in the
middle of a large fig tree and unfortunately once again remaining out of view.
Perseverance paid off however and keeping watch on the driveway eventually
resulted in these shy and elusive doves making their way on to an exposed
branch in full view, their dusky tones standing out from the nearby paler
Collared Doves and the thin crescent moon of grey on the wing clear to see.
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Laughing Dove |
Extremely skittish and much
more nervous than the Collared Doves, the pair regularly made flights across
the valley and back, clearly favouring the lusher vegetation and assorted fig
trees in the second garden along.
With the track becoming
increasingly narrower and with more rubble and potholes hindering our progress,
we decided to go no further, instead stopping to admire our first female
Fuerteventura Chat of the trip perched on the roof of the house before turning
back, once more catching sight of several more Barbary Ground Squirrels as they
skipped along the stone walls.
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Female Fuerteventura Chat |
With a brief stop at Rosa de
los Negrines (a well-known site as a Houbara Bustard roost) delivering a
distant flock of around 10 Black-bellied Sandgrouse on the deck, the extremely
poor quality of the roads resulted in our decision to not persevere with this
site, especially having already seen Houbara Bustard a day earlier and not
wanting to destroy our hire car.
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The arid plains of Rosa de los Negrines |
Heading instead straight for
the seaside town of El Cotillo, an afternoon seawatching session from an
elevated cliff top vantage point resulted in the remarkable sight of a 100+
strong flock of Cory’s Shearwaters resting on the sea, a scene I’ve never
witnessed before, being more used to seeing these impressive seabirds shearing
past at speed off a pelagic.
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Extremely distant phonescoped shot of the Cory's flock! |
A good number of Cory’s heading north were also
logged during the hour we were there, along with a solitary Sandwich Tern
flying close in to the cliffs and a small group of Rock Doves making the craggy
cliff top rocks their home.
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Castillo del Tostón |
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Esqueleto Ballena |
Sadly we couldn’t pull a Red-billed Tropicbird out
of the bag on this occasion, but with pairs now nesting on Fuerteventura and
neighbouring Lanzarote, the prospect of a fly by is slowly becoming an
increasing possibility for Canary Island seawatchers.
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Our seawatching vantage point at El Cotillo |
Heading slightly further north
to El Cotillo lighthouse itself also resulted in our first waders of the trip,
with a single Kentish Plover joining the Ringed Plovers foraging on the rocky
tideline, while a pair each of Common Sandpipers and Turnstones bobbed over the
boulders. A pair of Spoonbills wading in the shallows were an unexpected
sighting further up the sandy track, while another two Sandwich Terns patrolled
the crystal clear blue waters of the bay for any small fish as lunch.
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A pair of Little Egrets also fished off the rocky shore |
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El Cotillo Lighthouse |
Exploring the beach rock pools
for any interesting sea creatures revealed several fish and colourful shrimp
making the natural aquariums their home, while numerous large green crabs
patrolled the barnacle encrusted rocks, snapping their fierce claws angrily at
any intruders that dared come too close.
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Fantastic stone pillar sculptures lined the beaches at El Cotillo lighthouse |
With the afternoon still left
ahead of us, we made a final stop off at the famous Corralejo Dunes and beaches
just a 5 minute drive from our hotel, admiring the vast rolling expanses of
perfect white sand that seemed to stretch ahead for an eternity. Incredibly
picturesque, the beaches here were also stunning, the vibrant ultramarine blue waves
lapping against the bright white shore in a scene worthy of the very best
postcards.
Several more waders explored
the rocks below here, with Grey and Ringed Plovers, Turnstones and our first
Sanderlings pottering along the tideline. A single Cory’s Shearwater also
powered past, doing a close fly-by loop before carrying on with its journey.
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Blurred record shot of the close-in Cory's! |
With the day coming to a close
and all of our expected trip targets mopped up, satisfied we headed back to our
hotel for the night, once again enjoying a delicious Spanish meat feast from
the previous night’s restaurant before bed. What we hadn’t counted on was the
torrential downpour that was to besiege Corralejo during the evening, awaking
during the night to find the bathroom roof of our apartment streaming with
water and having to use every pot, pan and towel we could find to prevent a
total flood! An inconvenience to say the least, and we were both exceptionally
glad to wake up to find that the mass of towels we used to block the bathroom
door had done their job and prevented us from waking up in a pool of water! A
far from ideal end to the day that’s for sure!
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