There are 160,000 canaries in the Canary Islands, and I’m on a mission to find one. Unfortunately, they don’t hang out with us tourists; they prefer farm land, pine forests, and ravines.

This week I spent an entire day at the Las Lajas Recreational area on Tenerife Island with my fellow shipmate Katrina from New Zealand. She is not a birder, and I’m usually hesitant to go birding with non-birders. They try hard to be patient with the slow pace of birding, bless their hearts. But it reminds me of when you go for a walk with a dog, and he runs ahead of you and keeps turning his head to look back at you, no doubt thinking, hurry up you plodding human, what’s taking you so long! I can see it in their eyes, when I’ve been staring at a tree for over 15 minutes, that what they’re really thinking is: “Basia. That bird you thought you saw 15 minutes ago? It’s not coming back. EVER. The sooner you admit that, the sooner we can get on with life.”


So although I’m always happy to recruit new birders, I was a little uneasy when I set off on this excursion with a non-birder. But I needn’t have worried. She was a natural. Her hearing is much better than mine; I swear she could hear a bird tweeting before the tweet had left its mouth. And I was the one glancing back at her staring at trees. We had a lovely day, and I managed to add a few more birds to my life list. But, no canaries.

The only silver lining to these endless ship delays is it gives me more time to fulfill my mission. I am not leaving the Canary Islands, until I spot a canary.

{This post is especially for you, Tina B!}