A few endemics on a tour of eastern Madeira

We're currently on Madeira for a couple of weeks and started off today with a drive around the eastern part of the island, with our first stop at the magnificent Pico do Arieiro. At 1818m (6000ft) this place is often above the clouds and it's a bit of a hair raising drive to get here with hairpin bends, steep drops and in places toboggans coming down the road at high speed towards us! It's worth it though, because often when low level Madeira is covered in cloud, it's glorious sunshine up here and the views are just spectacular. 

A few endemic birds today as well, but obviously not the star species which is the endemic Zino's petrel for which this is the only breeding site in the world. A seabird breeding at 1818m above sea level! I saw them on a previous visit to the island in May 2016 (opens in a new window), but they only return to their nests at night and in any case they're not here in December.

This Berthelot's pipit showed really well, and on the drive up we also saw a couple of Trocaz pigeons fly across the road. Hopefully I'll see more of these in the coming days. A few Madeiran race kestrels were also seen, in fact they're pretty much everywhere, from the highest mountains to the heart of Funchal.

The views from Pico do Arieiro.

Many footpaths in the Madeiran mountains follow levades which are irrigation channels taking water to the lower levels. This one is Levada de Balcoes which starts at the village of Ribeiro Frio. In many cases tunnels have been built through mountains in order to carry the water.

On the northern side of the island, the middle level is very mountainous and is covered in the Laurasilva cloud forest, which as the name implies is mainly laurel trees which are usually covered in cloud and mist! This is where much of the wildlife interest lies, many endemic plant species, plus the few endemic land birds that occur on Madeira.

Since I last visited the island in 2016, the Madeiran race of chaffinch has now become a full blown species in it's own right and is now called, unsurprisingly, Madeiran chaffinch.

Madeira firecrests are real gems in the laurel forests, and we saw several today, but none were easy to photograph, tiny, fast moving and in dull misty conditions.

Ribeiro Frio.

Finally we visited Faial on the north coast of the island. These magnificent rock formations stood out to me. This type of formation is apparently called basaltic prismatic disjunction and is the result of larva cooling and cracking. 

Madeira is an ancient volcanic island and these rock formations look like they've cooled in mid larva flow and been frozen in time. The only other places where I've seen hexagonal columns such as this are Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland and Fingal's Cave on Staffa in the Outer Hebrides.