Madeira Day 3

This was the day that I had allocated to visit the Biological Gardens and the Monte Palace Tropical Garden at Monte north of Funchal Centre. In the event, transport complications and lack of time meant I only went to the latter, which a German guy on yesterday's Butterfly Tour suggested would be better for butterflies.

Having failed to find the relevant bus stop and missed the hourly bus connection to the Tropical Garden I decided to take the cable car.  It cost more time and money but I thought well worth it as it offered good views over the whole area.  The cable car passes quite close over the houses whose owners can do nothing about it if a certain overhead distance is observed. Perhaps in protest, one man immediately below was tending his garden completely naked, provoking an ecstatic reaction from an Asian lady in the same car as me.

Arriving at the garden, I headed straight at the Lauressilva trees optimistically hoping for another Cleopatra but the downward path of broken grey stone was quite tricky and so spent most of the time looking at my own feet.

I wasn't overall quite sure what to make of the Tropical Garden.  It's certainly informative and well-resourced with plenty of trees and flowers but I felt overall a bit unnatural and disappointing.  It certainly didn't produce any interesting butterflies as speckled woods were all I saw.

One thing I started to notice on them though is the variation of the depth of background colour of the forewing.  In this example, it is particularly dark:

Speckled Wood

I guess the lighter versions have been on the wing longer.

As throughout the rest of my stay in Madeira, the only bees seen were buff-tailed bumblebees and honey bees.  Perhaps more appropriate to the tropical theme was this oriental darter, doing its best  to imitate a twig.

Island Darter

Otherwise it all had a bit of a zoo-like feel.  There was a few ponds in the oriental garden, one with masses of koi carp and another with masses of croaking frogs.

Koi Carp

Croaking Frogs

A big hit with the visitors was this small pond full of flamingos, amusingly tossing their heads almost in synchrony as they expressed apparent verbal displeasure.

Flamingos

Presumably they've had their wings clipped to prevent them from flying away.

More interesting was another small pond containing a couple of ducks I couldn't recognise. These are wood ducks, a rare American migrant to Madeira and perhaps therefore also not entirely there by choice.

Male Wood Duck

Just before leaving I was reminded of reading that robins abroad are much shier than in the UK when this wee one turned up so close I could almost have caught it.

Robin

While waiting 30 minutes for the service bus back to Funchal, I did see a white butterfly at distance.  As the Madeiran Large White is extinct and the African migrant is a rarity, I'm 98% certain it must have been a small white.

As if by habit I made again for the Municipal Garden.  Once again the Monarch was in evidence except at this time there were at least four of them.  From time to time they performed the speckled wood habit of spiralling aggressively upwards, this time flying around to the background noise of a prolonged religious ceremony.

Monarchs

And just to prove they're not always completely elusive, I snapped a buff-tailed bumblebee on a nice flower

Buff-tailed Bumblebee

Madeira Day 1

This year's attempt to hasten the arrival of Spring was a holiday in Madeira from 30th March to 6th April. It was fortunate that I planned for the whole week as the original Day 1 turned into Day 0 after heavy winds forced a detour and overnight stay in Fuertaventura (Canary Islands) only arriving at my designated hotel one day late at 4.00 pm. There was just time for a quick walk to find a speckled wood butterfly - which turned to be the first of several hundred during the week.

Fortunately I had nothing planned until a birdwatching tour the next day.

This required getting up at dawn to catch the bus to Funchal.  I don't really do sunrises and scenery but the view over Cabo Girao was quite impressive.

Madeiran Sunrise

After a quick breakfast I had time to take a quick look in the Municipal Park, where I was impressed by the brightly-coloured flowers produced overhead by some of the trees.  There was also a waterfall catching the low sun to show a small rainbow. 

Colourful Tree

Waterfall

The birdwatching took place to the East of Funchal.  On the coast nearby we found several of the noted trocaz pigeons, the nearest of which never fully emerged from the cacti, and a sample of the local kestrels.

Trocaz Pigeon

Kestrel

However the star turn was this Atlantic Canary, singing its heart out:

Atlantic Canary

Just a pity I thought it wasn't going to!.. Apparently this is the forerunner of the domesticated canary.

A brief visit to a levada near Camacha produced a good number of madeiran firecrest sightings as well as some madeiran chaffinches.

Firecrest

On some examples the crest on the Madeiran version is quite spectacular.  Gere you can't see it at all.

Then it was back to a rugged piece of coast near Canico where I was pleased to get my first sighting of a clouded yellow this year.

Clouded Yellow

This was also a known location for spectacled warbler, which I was keen to see as I only heard them on  a previous trip to France in 2015  Unfortunately it proved to be tricky as they were plentiful but weaving in and out of the undergrowth and I was cursing myself for not having brought the lens hood for my camera as it was hard to focus in the bright and windy conditions.  After some patience (others' as well as my own) I did manage to get a fairly acceptable shot.

Spectacled Warbler

You can actually see it has a bit of nesting material in its mouth.

There was also a brief distant sighting of bertholets pipit - another first for me - as well as of a couple of hoopoe.

After the tour I got dropped off at the Parque de Santa Catarina on the promise of a sedge warbler on the island, for which however I had no interest.  By now the wall lizards were out and about and there were a couple of the larger examples quickly apparent as soon as I reached the lake.

Wall Lizards

The slightly smaller one however is technically still a juvenile as it retains a stripe on the upper body.

I was to learn in coming days that the appearance of wall lizards signifies that butterflies may be around.  Just after I saw them I noticed that a monarch butterfly - one of my key targets - was fluttering past the island on the left hand side of the lake.  Anyway I decided (rather coolly, I thought) to snap the lizards and meet the monarch when it reached the other side of the lake.

This duly occurred but it refused to settle until I pursued it into a children's play park, when it did settle high up in a bush. I focused on the exact branch and took the shots, only to find later that they did not show the butterfly.  No idea what happened there.  The only other thing I saw on going round the lake was a bunch of very lazy muscovy ducks snoozing under a tree.

Muscovy Ducks

I then decided to return to the Municipal Garden as I'd noted that the wee restaurant had scabbard fish on the menu.  There was some time to sit around and observe during which I spotted a red admiral and this interesting looking hoverfly - later identified on iNaturalist as an epauletted hoverfly

Epauletted Hoverfly

The even better surprise came when another monarch turned up and posed reliably on a flower bed near some teenage girls.

Monarch - upperwing

Monarch - underwing

Overall, a pretty successful day.

Wednesday 3rd December

Two week holiday based in Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria where the temperatures (around 25 degrees) were well above average although overall weather untypically stormy at times.

Spot The Serin (hard)

Early appearances at the hotel pool were the Canary Islands chiffchaff and hoopoe, the latter in silhouette only as it landed occasionally on the railings at sunset.  There were also several blackbirds, whose song patterns were different to the UK version.

After a couple of days I got a good sighting of a couple of serins on the way to Amadores beach, although not at all sure where the second one went in the photo I managed to take. This is a pity, as there is a serin called the atlantic canary and it would have been nice to check.

I didn't spent much time walking in the hills - all rock and rubble - but a brief stint above roque de l'este produced good views of bertholet's pipits anongst the cacti and a number of painted lady butterflies. However I did attempt an ambitious bike ride up the Barranco valley towards Soria and, before it got stupidly steep, fleetingly saw the one bird I was keenest to spot. A blue chaffinch that was singing in a low tree flew on to the next tree, providing an unmistakeable inflight profile.  I didn't manage to see it after that.

Increasingly visible en route were more painted ladies, plus a couple of milkweed-type butterflies that are apparently known as the monarch, and a few blue dragonflies.  There was also a bird that looked like a wood warbler but didn't sing like one, and up in the heights another small finch I couldn't identify.

Spot the parrotfish (one - easy; two - less so)

A fishing trip out of Puerto Mogan was disappointing, as all I caught were a couple of small fish known as loreto though others did better and a few rays were taken.  More interesting were the fish visible in the harbour at Mogan including many mullet, some of which looked over 4lb,, colourful wrasse, white sea bream, two lurking parrotfish and a wahoo-like effort that was probably a yellowmouth barracuda.


But the greatest mystery was the large, multicoloured bird of prey we saw from the transfer bus as we passed by Maspalomas on the way in, flapping and guiding like a harrier over the coastline.  There was no time to observe closely, and another example never appeared.