23rd December 2009 2009

I should be reporting on the arrival of the snowy weather but I have been out of the country for the last week, visiting  the island of La Palma and enjoying temperatures above 20 celsius.

The Canary Islands aren’t great places for the bird-watcher because the number of species to be seen is very limited. However, there are one or two species which can’t be seen anywhere else. I was busy enjoying my family holiday, so I didn’t spend time chasing around trying to spot the two endemic pigeon species to be seen on the island. However, I did spot a few other species.

Several birds which I noticed and which are familiar to people in the U.K. exist on the island as distinct races or subspecies: chaffinch, blackbird, blackcap and kestrel. It was very noticeable that there were few birds to be seen when looking out to sea. The only birds which I noticed were yellow-legged gulls, which are similar to the herring gulls normally seen in the U.K.. As we travelled around the island, I occasionally spotted groups of choughs. I also saw a little egret in flight.

The island may not be exciting for the birdwatcher but it is a very interesting place for the botanist. There are many species on the Canary Islands which won’t be found anywhere else and some species which are endemic to individual islands. I didn’t spend any significant time searching for plants but was very pleased to spot a Ceropegia on the first day. When on Tenerife a couple of years ago, I was on the lookout for Ceropegia fusca but did not spot it. The plants which I saw growing in a number of places on La Palma are, I believe, of a very similar species - Ceropegia hians. The Ceropegias, which grow on a base of volcanic rubble and gravels, are xerophytes and look like a bundle of sticks or bamboo canes. During the wet season, narrow leaves sprout from the tips of the stems.

There are a number of large-growing species of Echium in the Canary Islands. On La Palma, I saw the local speciality, the La Palma white bugloss (Echium brevirame). Also, amongst the ubiquitous shrub-like specimens of Senecio kleinia and Euphorbia broussonetii, I found the Canary Islands twayblade (Habenaria tridactylites) and Canary islands squill (Scilla latifolia) in bloom.

There were many other interesting or unusual plants to be seen but, given that we were on the island only a a week before Christmas, it was particularly apt to see lots of Poinsettias in full bloom in local gardens. This plant, which people in the U.K. know as a pot plant, grows as a rather straggly shrub in the gardens of La Palma.

I spent some time snorkelling in the sea in front of our hotel. There were lots of rocky areas which provided homes for fish and many other creatures. My daughter was very enthusiastic about her first experience of snorkelling and very excited each time she spotted a school of fish.

For me, the most surprising encounter was with a trumpetfish. This long, thin fish - about 0.5 m or more long - is a common species but I was taken by surprise when, for the first time, I turned around and found one hovering a metre or two in front of me. For a full list of the species that I managed to identify, click here.

I picked up a couple of shells. One of these - shown at the top of the page - is the shell of a sea urchin. My research suggests that this is probably Paracentrotus lividus but it could also be Psammechinus miliaris. The other shell, which immediately made me think of abalone, is the shell of an ormer (Haliotis tuberculata). The shell has an iridescent inner coating of mother-of-pearl, to which it is hard to do justice with watercolour. The species is a member of the same family (Haliotidae) as the Californian Red Abalone and is eaten in some places.

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