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

The Known and the Unknown

Malcolm and I took advantage of the opportunity to join an organised Bees and Pollinators Walk at Hepple Estate on Saturday.

In spite of good weather early sightings were few but we soon managed to come across garden bumblebee and early bumblebee (seems to be more of both this year) and Malcolm managed to capture an early queen.

Early Bumblebee Queen

Around the same time I found a mining bee on trefoil, which was identified as A probable Wilkes' Mining Bee.

Wilkes' Mining Bee

Someone else found another mining bee in the hawthorn bushes.  It was also identified but I forgot to write the name down!

Mining Bee

Over lunch, there were a few nomad bees probing the gaps in the steps and wall of the formal garden, but all were very elusive.  One clearly had a red stripe at the top of the thorax, which got me thinking of the flavous nomad bee suspect that was in the garden the other week.

The group headed towards a rougher area around the stream and ponds.  Here I came across the only notable butterfly all day, an absolutely tiny small copper and a pair of small red damselflies in the act of mating.

Very Small Copper

Small Red Damselflies

You have to look hard to see the second damselfly.

Mammals turned up as well in the shape of a frog, and more bizarrely a pipistrelle bat that one of the group found swimming in the main pond.  We speculated that it had fallen in in pursuit of insects flying over the water and it was eventually decided to put it in a tree, where it immediately climbed higher, perhaps looking for somewhere to sleep.

Frog crawling...

Bat climbing...

Shortly before that I had made what was described by some as the 'find of the day' - a bilberry bumblebee. However I have to fess up immediately and say that I misidentified it.  It was the chap next to me who pointed out that the red tail is too big for it to be other than a bilberry bumblebee and proceeded to net it.

This caused a bit of discussion and I wasn't sure I'd got a decent photo of it.  So I tried to take a snap of it on the chap's hand before it flew off, which didn't quite work....

Bilberry Bumblebee escaping

Nevertheless a great spot for me, especially thinking how much time I spent searching for them in the Highlands this time last year.

Another first time sighting was this jewel wasp, but less exciting since I'd never heard of them before.

Jewel Wasp

The same applied for the pregnant yellow fly I found that seemed to be only known by a latin name.

On the other hand I had seen a rust fungus at Durisdeer recently and probably the land bird that was curiously walking on some floater weed in the pond, but it flew off in a hurry.

Rust Fungus

Bird walking on water...

But in a way the most puzzling thing surrounded this mining bee that my normal bee mentor plucked this out of an oak tree and then was unable to identify it beyond that it was a mining bee and neither of our other two experts could identify it either.  It is a rather worn specimen.

Unidentified Mining Bee

I'm not sure if it was this making me less certain or just chance, but in the last couple of days I have found that I have seen a couple of solitary bees in the garden and have no idea what they are.

Here is a selection of what I have found:

The first two are of the same bee.

Thursday 15th June

Half of June gone and the promising weather of late May has not continued.

On Tuesday I decided that the aubretia's attempt to invade the edge of the lawn had ended in a stalemate of World War 1 proportions and so was pushing it back and cutting the resulting long grass away when a large green frog emerged from where it had been.  This was ironic as I'm sure I had been telling someone I never get frogs in my garden any more.  It hopped off sharpish but no idea where it ended up as I'm sure it couldn't have leapt the wall.

I interrupted the Wednesday bike ride to do a little foray along the Nith south of Kingholm Quay, as one of the butterfly group told me it was quite good for birdlife.

Peek a boo! Baby Whitethroat

It was indeed a most pleasant short stroll.  I got
a good view of a willow warbler, though not a photo. Then there were some grating noises from some birds from an area of elder bushes and dog roses. The culprits were pretty elusive too, but I finally got a shot that suggests to me they were juvenile whitethroats.  That was one of the species my butterfly contact had indicated (forgot the other one!) and it was sort of confirmed when a senior whitethroat appeared a few yards down the track.

I also got a good snap of a song thrush, a poorish one of a goldfinch and a fleeting glimpse of what I took to be a rather pale looking painted lady - can it still have been one that overwintered?

Continuing the bike ride, I took a detour on the way back to go down to the entrance of Caerlaverock Wildlife and Wetlands Trust.  This only produced a nice sighting of a yellowhammer plus one of an otter constructed in lego before I retreated back to the high road in the grips of a major hayfever attack.

Lego Otter