Holiday Birding in Lanzarote January 2019

We managed to avoid some of the worst January weather in Manchester by going to Lanzarote for ten days from the 13th January. We stayed in Playa Blanca at the Princessa Yaiza hotel as usual and as well as our usual visit to the Salinas de Janubio, we also had another guided morning (well about 6 hours or more actually so a real bargain at 49 euros each) with our friends from Eco-Insider In both places we got the kinds of birds one hopes to get and in total we got 29 species – perhaps not a lot but most of the good ones were in there.

We had hardly got going before we saw a Stone Curlew right by the side of the track roosing on the ground – or perhaps a nest. Thereafter we had several good views of Stone Curlew throughout the afternoon. Houbara were very well observed and we must have got ten of these fantastic birds, several of them displaying. In fact our guide suggested that they may have regarded our jeep as a rival and were displaying so well to us because we were seen as a rival. In any case, it was fantastic to observe them in their display. Cream-coloured Coursers were harder to find but we did eventually fins a flock of them and we got some half-decent views before they were flushed by a goat-herd and his goats.

A local oddity was a Marsh Harrier. We had seen one in El Jable on a previous visit but that was a bit later in the year I think. Southern Grey Shrikes were reasonablt easily sen and, of course, Lesser Short-toed Larks abounded as well as the usual Berthelot’s Pipits. There were plenty of Ravens and our guide told us an interesting story about some recently observed behaviour on their part.

It seems that small mammals and lizards are attracted to the beer cans the locals leave scattered everywhere in the “desert” and once they get inside they drink the sugary beer. Unfortunately for them, they discover that it is not so easy to get out and apparently the Ravens have cottoned on to this and have taken to pircing the sides of the cans to each the prey inside. Indeed one report was of a Raven carrying a whole can in its bill – a Corvid take-away!

Around and about we also managed to get a Hoopoe but this was probably the only one we saw all through our holiday. Kestrels were more common.

Bird Sightings at El Jable and around Lanzarote on 15th January 2019

In Playa Blanca itself we, obviously, got lots of Yellow-legged Gulls but also some Sandwich Terns but most of the other birds we saw were at the Salinas de Janubio. We were gratified to see signs informing the public that dogs were no longer allowed around the lagoons and this had the advantage of making the place much safer for the nesting and roosting birds as well as doing away with the seemingly endless piles of dog shit that used be all over the area and made walking around a nasty business. It also meant that the whole place was much quieter As well as taking the usual route (even here we discovered further lagoons beyond those we already knew of ) we also (on another day) took the top path from the main road that allows you a rather vertiginous view from above of the far lagoon corner where a lot of the birds usually seek seclusion.

At the Salinas our very first birds were two or three Trumpeter Finches just at the path where you walk down from the car park. On the lagoons  there were plenty of Black-winged Stilts, as ever, a great number of Common Sandpipers. There were not great numbers of anything but we did get a decent sized flock of Black-necked Grebe. In the smaller numbers were Ruddy SHelduck, Greenshank, Redshank and Turnstone. Singles included Avocet, and Kentish Plover. We didn’t see a Whimbrel there but later on at El Golfo as we were sitting outside the restaurant we usually go to, we saw one picking its way through the various pools of water on the beach.

Bird Sightings Salinas de Janubio, Lanzarote 17th January 2019

 The total list of birds for our Lanzarote visit were :

Ruddy Shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea)
Black-necked Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis)
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)
Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis)
Eurasian Marsh Harrier (Circus aeruginosus)
Houbara Bustard (Chlamydotis undulata)
Eurasian Stone Curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus)
Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus)
Pied Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta)
Kentish Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus)
Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos)
Common Greenshank (Tringa nebularia)
Common Redshank (Tringa totanus)
Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus)
Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres)
Cream-coloured Courser (Cursorius cursor)
Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis)
Sandwich Tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis)
Rock Dove (Columba livia)
Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto)
Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupa epops)
Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus)
Southern Grey Shrike (Lanius meridionalis)
Common Raven (Corvus corax)
Lesser Short-toed Lark (Calandrella rufescens)
White Wagtail (Motacilla alba)
Berthelot’s Pipit (Anthus berthelotii)
Trumpeter Finch (Bucanetes githagineus)
Spanish Sparrow (Passer hispaniolensis)