Fuerteventura Birding Trip Report - Day 2 (Tuesday 25th October 2016)

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

Castillo del Tostón

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.

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.

A pair of Little Egrets also fished off the rocky shore

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.

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.

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!