Backyard Birds

Canary Island Chiffchaffs

Canary Island Chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus Canariensis)

Chiffchaffs

 

The Canary Islands Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus canariensis) is a leaf warbler that is endemic to the Canary Islands, Spain.

Previously the Canary Island Chiffchaff was considered as a subspecies of the Common Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita). Now it is recognised as a separate species under the name Phylloscopus canariensis (Clement and Helbig, 1998; Sangster et al., 2001) for the following reasons (compared to the Common Chiffchaff) (Helbig et al., 1996):

  • Smaller in size
  • Shorter wings
  • Wings rounder
  • Vocalizations different
  • mtDNA sequence divergence

 

Subspecies

  • Western Canary Islands Chiffchaff: Western Canary Islands:El Hierro, La Palma, La Gomera, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria.
  • Eastern Canary Islands Chiffchaff: Eastern Canary Islands: Lanzarote and possibly Fuerteventura.

 


 

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Gordon Ramel

Gordon is an ecologist with two degrees from Exeter University. He's also a teacher, a poet and the owner of 1,152 books. Oh - and he wrote this website.

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