Christine's walking & birds blog

Under the volcano.....



And this was as far as we could get up El Teide on Tenerife, because to go beyond where the cable car deposits you, visitors must have a pre-booked permit from the authorities - and they allow only 150 people a day on the summit. Thanks to my dodgy knee we didn't apply; but it was still worth going up the cable car - you can follow a path traversing the flank a little way, and maybe get a taste of altitude sickness. The man who took our picture was possibly suffering from it....


We certainly were - we found ourselves short of breath and I got a sudden sharp headache. So maybe we were better off not walking up after all. We were allowed only an hour before getting the cable car back down.


Then it was back to the coach and on to Los Roques - strange, fantastic rock shapes rearing up from the sedimentary plain and ancient lava flows. The tour guide told us that the national park had been used as backdrop in various films, including "the spaghetti westerns and One Million Years BC". After a slight pause he added "with Raquel Welch". His rather monotonous voice didn't change, but seldom have three small words seemed more loaded with meaning.


Our hotel was on the west coast, near the immense cliffs known as Los Gigantes. Birds were a little thin on the ground, although it was a good opportunity to study Atlantic (yellow-legged) gulls.


A small warbler proved difficult to see, but I finally got a few pics and identified it as a Canary Islands chiffchaff (western, I think). LATER: Apparently the eastern CI chiffchaff (once found on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura), is extinct.



The bird's call was sharper and more urgent than the regular chiffchaff's, more like a "sweet!" than "hweet". There were some bursts of song, "angrier" than the more familiar sound - not unlike a Cetti's warbler in tone.

The canary was feeding on the cliffs below.


But the most interesting birds were the Cory's shearwaters. They were mostly too distant to observe well, but now and then a few would come closer to shore; and then we could see their large size and the distinctive gliding flight with bowed wings, while the pics showed that the bill was yellow.



We walked a couple of times to Playa la Arena, a black-sand beach with a lifeguard, where red flags were often flying. The picture is looking back towards our hotel, with Los Gigantes in the background.


If you fight your way through from the water's edge you can find some calmish water to swim in, but the beach shelves very sharply and the waves both crash in onto it and drain back very powerfully from it; so you have to choose your moment or you get tumbled about quite a bit. One chap strode determinedly in as a giant wave broke and got hurled backwards, ending up spreadeagled on the sand like a starfish. It's a happy beach, where people laugh a lot - usually at other people.

Otherwise we swam in the hotel pools and sunbathed on the terraces (though we never once slipped out at dawn to bag the best sun-beds with our towels as almost everyone else did - I think Greger and I lack the killer instinct).

I had seen an impressive thread-waisted wasp of some sort in the undergrowth, and finally got a pic of one on the last day. It's possibly a Sceliphron spiriflex.


I believe the insect below to be a robber fly of some sort, although larger than any I've seen in the UK (like the wasp, it was at least an inch long).


As we sat waiting for the coach to take us to the airport, a blue butterfly landed in front of us allowing just one snap before it danced away. It was a long-tailed blue, so I'm glad I got this record shot.


We saw several monarch butterflies, and very impressive they were too. The flight is powerful with long glides, and I could never get anywhere near one to photograph it.

After a four-and-a-half-hour flight, we arrived in Edinburgh at about 1 am, and I felt bad about not being able to share the driving. Greger had caught a cold a few days into the holiday and still has it. He was very tired, but I stayed awake as well to watch out for deer. We stopped at the 24-hour Tesco in Inverness to buy stuff for breakfast and set off on the last hour of our journey. Along the side of Loch Broom, we caught sight of a pale shape flying above the trees and debated whether it was a tawny or a barn owl.

It was drizzling with rain as we unpacked the car and for the first couple of hours the house was freezing. We were home.

Yet another trip to the east coast yesterday. The weather was bright and sunny but a cold wind had sprung up. A drive to Alturlie brought the season's first scaup.


It was almost lost among the hundred or so wigeon. Then a slender duck flew along the firth and landed on the choppy water, giving me only my second sighting of pintail in Scotland.


A single teal was also present; and around 100 redshanks were being gradually pushed up the beach by the incoming tide. Then we went to see The Martian (which was quite good fun) and drove home in the dark - watching out for the pale ghostly shapes of red deer near the road on the high ground of the Dirrie Mor.

We went to Inverness to get 'flu jabs, and intended to go on to the movies. But that seemed a waste of such a great day, so before driving home we went out to Alturlie instead. There were between ten and fifteen tree sparrows zooming around in the hedgerow and out on the stubble field.


At least 100 wigeon were on the sea, and tantalisingly far out beyond them were three winter-plumaged grebes; probably Slavonian, but even with the telescope I couldn't be sure. Two whooper swans were on Loch Garve and two more were on Loch Droma.

Scotland is having some lovely weather, although even while you're enjoying the bright warm sunshine sudden cold currents of air are a reminder that in reality summer is gone, and the northern autumn is here.