Region covered by this guide
This nature and wildlife guidebook covers Tenerife and La Gomera, including all its Natural and National Parks. It is a thorough and practical guide for naturalists and nature lovers. The guide offers background information, detailed routes and site descriptions plus tips on watching wildlife and finding birds and wildflowers. The book offers a mix of walking routes and car routes with stops and short walks. All the walks in this book, including some more challenging ones, are designed to explore the landscape and find birds and wildlife rather than covering ground.
About Tenerife and La Gomera and their wildlife
Tenerife and La Gomera are the most diverse islands of the Canaries. Set in a dramatic landscape, these are islands of extremes: from sun-baked, shrubby lava fields to evergreen cloud forests, and from lush terraced mountain slopes to the strange high-altitude semi-desert in the crater of the Teide volcano – each corner is a different world. Only two ingredients are constant: spectacular scenery and an endemic flora and fauna. Over 30% of the wildflowers of Tenerife and La Gomera occur nowhere else in the world but here, hence the title the ‘Galapagos of botany’ sometimes given to the islands. Likewise, the birds, the reptiles and butterflies have evolved into a unique fauna. Hence, these islands are a must-see for anyone with a passion for the natural world. This book is designed to be your companion on your explorations.
Look for more information and images on our Wildlife Site Page on Tenerife.
About the authors
Dirk Hilbers (NL, 1976), set up the Crossbill Guides Foundation and travels Europe to research the guidebooks. This is the 17th guide on which he has worked. As a biologist, when not in the field, Dirk Hilbers is a free-lance writer and and environmental ethics.
Kees Woutersen (NL, 1956) lives and works in Huesca in the north of Spain. Before retirement, he ran his own nature travel company, Aragon Natuurreizen, that specialises in bird trips, including trips to Tenerife and La Gomera. Besides this guide Kees also wrote, together with Dirk, the Crossbill Guide to Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, plus several other guides on areas in Spain and Portugal.
James Lowen –
” For each route I tried and each site I visited, the material was both accurate and apposite. Impressive!” – James Lowen, author of ‘A summer of British wildlife’
For the full review, see http://www.jameslowen.com/blog-11-feb-2016-crossbill-guide-review.html
Paul Asman –
When my wife and I went to Tenerife and La Gomera, we wanted to go slowly and understand, as best we could, what we were seeing. When we got the Crossbill guide, we put others aside and used that exclusively for planning. It worked perfectly. We followed its suggested routes, and we knew what to look for when we stopped. Crossbill was also more aligned with our speed than other guides. For example, Crossbill says that the loop at the Roques de García will take 2 hours. It took us a bit over. Rother puts the time at 1.25 hours; the sign at the walk itself puts it at 1.5. Rother is a guide for brisk hiking, and fine for that. Crossbill, which lists the common species along the trail, is meant for closer examination. That’s what we wanted. When we got home, we looked inside the back cover to see where else we could go with a Crossbill guide. I do have one criticism – the guide lacks an index, and “search inside” is not available on Amazon. I’d like one or the other.