The Canary Islands Bush Chat is endemic to the Canary Islands and occurs in rocky, scrubby areas of Fuerteventura.
Males have a dark head, white eyebrow, and an orange patch below the throat. Females also show a white eyebrow and orange on the breast, but these markings tend to be paler and smaller.
The Canary Islands Stonechat lives only on Fuerteventura. Researchers walked 500-metre transects and compared counts and mapped distributions from 2005–2006 and 2024. In 2024, when the population was at a low point, occupied areas extended beyond protected-area boundaries.
The 2024 table reports 40.9% of the birds and 76.2% of their occupied area outside Special Protection Areas for Birds. Counts were higher inside Special Areas of Conservation than outside, while counts did not differ inside and outside the bird-focused SPAs. The two protection categories therefore overlapped with the species’ distribution in different ways.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
During the 2024 population minimum, 76.2% of the Canary Islands Stonechat’s occupied area lay outside Special Protection Areas for Birds. Repeatedly mapping the occupied range and including sites beyond SPA boundaries in island plans can help retain habitat used as the population shifts.