Canary Island Chiffchaffs

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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