Blue Chaffinch: Darwin’s Missed Chance

Observing the endemic creatures of the Canary Islands

The Tenerife Blue Chaffinch (Fringilla teydea) has become a symbol of the island. Photo: Ann Marie Ackermann

The mistake Spain regrets

A stroke of a diplomat’s pen upended scientific history in 1832.

The British consul who signed the quarantine order on January 6 in the Canary Islands thought he was protecting lives – and preserving diplomacy with Spain. A cholera epidemic had hit England, and Spain wanted to quarantine English ships before they landed.

The consul had no idea he just took the islands off the map of evolutionary history. Because the ship was the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin was on it, and had he been able to land, the Tenerife Blue Chaffinch would have probably dethroned the Galapagos finches as the mascot of evolutionary theory. Darwin never got to explore the island, for the Captain of the Beagle decided to sail on instead.

Spain now regrets refusing Darwin’s landing.

But that’s precisely what makes the Canary Island of Tenerife such a fascinating place to visit. It offers a bit of alternative evolutionary history: finding the things Darwin would have.

The Canary Islands

The Canary Islands are like Europe’s Galapagos. One hundred miles west of Morocco, they enjoy a subtropical climate, boast the highest mountain in Spain (Teide), and montane cloud forests. They’re full of endemic species you can’t see anywhere else in the world. Searching for them is like a treasure hunt. When I visited Tenerife, the same island Darwin wanted to explore, one of my goals was to see the Tenerife Blue Chaffinch.

Charles Darwin’s enchantment with the Canaries

Darwin in 1840, several years after his groundbreaking voyage on the HMS Beagle. George Richmond (1809-1896), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Long before he visited the Galapagos, Darwin dreamed of visiting Tenerife. Alexander von Humboldt’s tales of the dragon blood trees in the Orotava Valley and his climb of Mount Teide in 1799 captivated Darwin. The Prussian naturalist was convinced Tenerife was the most beautiful place on earth:

After having traversed the banks of the Orinoco, the Cordilleras of Peru, and the most beautiful valleys of Mexico, I own that I have never beheld a prospect more varied, more attractive, more harmonious in the distribution of the masses of verdure and of rocks, than the western coast of Teneriffe….  I cannot compare this prospect with any, except the views of the bays of Genoa and Naples; but Orotava is greatly superior to both in the magnitude of the masses and in the richness of vegetation. Alexander von Humboldt, Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of America, during the years 1799-1804, ch. 1.2.

Darwin read wanted to retrace Humboldt’s trip, experience the mysterious trees, and climb Spain’s highest mountain.

Darwin’s miserable setback

The captain of the Beagle planned to stop in Tenerife in January 1832 and climb the Teide to calculate the longitude. So Darwin was thrilled to sign on as a naturalist. This was his chance to visit Tenerife!

The Beagle arrived in the harbor of Santa Cruz, Tenerife’s capital, on January 6, 1832.  Darwin gushed about his first sight of the mountain:

The Teide rising above the Orotava Valley. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann

The peak or sugar loaf has just shown itself above the clouds. It towers in the sky twice as high as I should have dreamed of looking for it. A dense bank of clouds entirely separates the snowy top from its rugged base. – Charles Darwin, Diary of the Voyage of the H. M. S. Beagle, January 6, 1832.

But the crew was met with bad news about the cholera epidemic and quarantine. As Darwin lamented in his diary,

It is now about ii o’clock & I must have another gaze at this long wished for object of my ambition. Oh misery, misery, we were just preparing to drop our anchor within half a mile of Santa Cruz, when a boat came alongside, bringing with it our death-warrant. The consul declared we must perform a rigorous quarantine of twelve days. Those who have never experienced it can scarcely conceive what a gloom it cast on every one: matters were soon decided by the Captain ordering all sail to be set & make a course for the Cape Verd [sic] Islands. And we have left perhaps one of the most interesting places in the world, just at the moment when we were near enough for every object to create without satisfying our utmost curiosity.

Tenerife’s lost chance

As they sailed away the next day, Charles Darwin said goodbye to Tenerife in his diary, describing how the cone of Teide gradually sank under the horizon as the Beagle sailed south.

While he was writing that, a certain bird species might have perched just high enough in a pine tree on the slopes of the Teide to notice a patch of white moving across the sea: the Beagle’s sails, carrying away one of the millennium’s greatest scientists. What would have happened if Darwin and this bird had met each other? That is probably the greatest alternative history question in evolutionary theory.

Had Darwin landed, the chances would have been excellent he would have encountered one of the species, because the only place in the world this bird lives is in the pine forests 1,000 to 2,000m up the slopes of the Teide, precisely the mountain Darwin wanted to climb. And the bird isn’t shy. It probably wouldn’t have ended well for a few individuals – they would have landed in Darwin’s collections. But the Origin of Species might read differently today.

Meet the blue Tenerife Blue Chaffinch (Fingilla teydea).

Tenerife Blue Chaffinch: The finch Darwin would have found

One of the great privileges of visiting Tenerife is stepping in the footsteps Darwin wanted to take but couldn’t. My husband and I were in the Orotava Valley in 2022 for a second honeymoon, and one of the things we wanted to concentrate on was the island’s nature. What species would we encounter that Darwin would have collected? The Tenerife Blue Chaffinch was on the top of my wish list.

Professional ornithologist and naturalist Felipe Siverio, with permission. He offers private excursions, for one or two people, on natural history and endemic birds on Tenerife. You can contact him via Messenger through his Facebook profile. We hired him for a day. He showed us lots of endemic animals and plants, explained the island’s geology, and gave us some tips on where to find a good place to eat. A local guide like Felipe can really enrich your vacation.

In order to find as many endemic species as possible, we hired a local ornithologist and naturalist, Felipe Siverio, to guide us for the day. He took us right up the mountain for the Tenerfie Blue Chaffinch, where we found it right away.

The chaffinches weren’t wary of us, flitting nearby on the ground, foraging for food. My husband found a little spider on his clothes and placed it on a wooden fence a few feet away. Almost immediately, the finch in the first photograph above landed and gobbled it up. I took the picture a couple seconds later. It looked even bluer than in the picture.

We will probably never make it to the Galapagos or encounter Darwin’s finches there, but it was a great honor to meet the finch that missed its chance.

What do you do to make your trips more interesting? Have you ever found that learning the history of a place enhanced your visit? Please comment and tell us!

For paid subscribers:

The Canary Island’s signature dish, papas con mojo, is a crossroads dish that combines both European and South American ingredients. Papas con mojo is such an old recipe that Darwin would have encountered it had he landed. On Friday, October 11, paid subscribers will receive a post with some history and a recipe. I’ll teach you to make it at home.

Next week:

Saskatchewan, Canada, celebrates harvest festivals at this time of year. In her post scheduled for Wednesday, October 16, author Marie Powell will guide you through one unusual small-town festival as an introduction to the tradition. On Friday, October 18, she’ll offer paid subscribers some ideas for unique pumpkin carving designs.

German version:

You can find a German version of this post here.

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