During our time on Madeira I took the conscious decision to prioritise seeing sea birds over land birds. It was only due to the generosity of my wife and parents that I managed to negotiate three afternoons and evenings at sea during what I believe is called a “3G holiday”, when three generations go together. As such, there were no brownie points left in the bank to spend looking for land birds. These I would only see if they happened to appear near me when I was out with the family or they happened to feed in our hotel gardens. Fortunately, most did! It is not too difficult to catch up with the passerine endemics, or near-endemics, on Madeira and I saw pretty much all of them. I had no time to visit the various small water bodies on the island where waders may be found, nor did I visit any of the native laurel forests, which was a shame but was a consequence of my decision to spend more time with sea birds. Here are the land birds that I saw:
Plain Swift. From our hotel room balcony. These were the default swift species over Funchal. This is a small dark swift with little, if any, pale throat patch, a fluttering flight action and a deep tail fork (apparently). Maderian Firecrests. Smart birds, but strangely leggy! Adult on the left, juvenile on the right. Trocaz Pigeon. The pale band is visible here on the long tail. This one flew past at eye level over the Botanical Gardens as we were visiting. This was something of a relief, as I had no time to head into the laurel forests higher up the mountains. A candidate for the worst picture of Atlantic Canary ever? I saw or heard this species every day, but most were unapproachable. There were lots of female/juvenile types. Female “Madeiran Chaffinch”. Not a full species but the subspecies Fringilla coelebs maderensis. On the female, note the greenish mantle and undertail coverts. Male “Maderian Chaffinch”, Fringilla coelebs maderensis. The orange colouration is pale and restricted to the face and upper chest. The breast and underparts are off-white. The mantle is grey with some green rather than the chestnut of north-west European birds. Grey Wagtail, of the subspecies Motacilla cinerea schmitzi. Paler upperparts and a less obvious supercilium than seen on most European birds. Common Waxbill. I enjoyed seeing (and hearing) these birds with Fabian, who pretended to be pretty ambivalent about seeing an introduced species until we were offered the opportunity to hop out and scan for them. Suddenly he became really quite keen to see them. As soon as they were safely on the list, the ambivalence returned! To be fair, I felt the same.
I also saw the local subspecies of Blackcap, which has the eye-catching Latin name of Sylvia atricapilla heineken. Should we be calling this subspecies Heineken Blackcap? Or would that lead to confusion with a Heineken nightcap? Things might get messy.
Next: Madeiran cetaceans, reptiles and butterflies.
