The Madeira Archipelago is an autonomous region of Portugal situated off the coast of north-west Africa. The island is volcanic (though not active), with a subtropical climate characterised by relief rainfall and pleasant temperatures year-round. This trip took place in early December, when the climate was fairly cool and moist.
An incredibly useful resource is this list of terrestrial flora and fauna of Madeira, which was consulted widely during the trip! The Mid-Atlantic Island Invertebrates Specialist Group was also a great site I discovered afterwards for useful links and information.
We stayed in Machico, a large town on the southern side of the island. The first day, as is the usual pattern, was comprised of walking around the local area and seeing what local wildlife was to be found.
The first noticeable Madeiran wildlife is undoubtedly the lizards. The Madeira Lizard, Madeira Wall Lizard or Lagartixa-da-Madeira (Teira dugesii) is a species of lacertid lizard which has evolved to become incredibly tolerant and even social with each other, seen in large numbers pretty much everywhere. Like most lacertids, they are shy and extremely fast when warmed up, so photographing them can be tricky depending on time, location, and situation. The one in the below images was photographed on the rocky beach in Machico, where they ran over the drifts of dead leaves and between the driftwood. Despite being relatively shy around Machico, the urban lizards were much more tolerant than the rural ones.
Elsewhere on the rocky beach, visible mainly from the side of a rather slippery jetty around some large boulders, were great numbers of crabs of the type commonly called "Sally Lightfoot Crabs", in this case the East Atlantic Sally Lightfoot Crab Grapsus adscensionis.
They were fabulous-looking crabs and extremely nifty and observant, much like the lizards they shared the boulders with. I couldn't get my camera anywhere near them, even when it was mounted on a stick and I was hiding my face. After a fun half an hour or so attempting to wait out a crab with very limited success, I noticed movement underwater, just below the water. To my delight, this was a different species of crab - this one even faster and more responsive to my movements. Finding that the out-of-water Lightfoot Crabs were not cooperating, I switched my attention to the world just beneath the waves. I found the stripy-legged crabs to be incredibly spider-like in their mannerisms, shooting down into cracks and underneath rocks with lightning speed. Since the water was dynamic, reducing my vision, and my attention was focused on the crabs, I failed to pay any mind to the shadowy shapes I occasionally saw flitting about beneath the boulders. It was only until I was reviewing footage that night that I realised that every time I placed the camera under the water, a beautiful black fish with a purple head was coming out of his hiding place to inspect it. This fish was Abudefduf luridus, a species of damselfish found around Madeira, the Azores and Canaries. Unfortunately, the weather conditions didn't allow for another opportunity to try and film this fish properly - maybe next time.
Left: Big Grapsus adscensionis. Right: Percnon gibbesi
A useful publication of the decapod crustaceans of Madeira was helpful in identifying the semiterrestrial crabs. It also helped identify the spider-like underwater crabs as Percnon gibbesi. The terrible image above of this crab is a still from a video, which was the only part containing the crab's appearance before they started teleporting.
The plant life in the urban areas was incredible - every popular houseplant in the UK was grown outdoors and seemed to boast incredible vigour in the climate. I noted Strelitzia, Monstera, Mimosa, many species of Ficus (including, outside our hotel, a Rubber Plant F. elastica which had grown into a proper tree), Date Palms (Phoenix dactylifera), bromeliads (including huge spiky ones and frosty-looking Tillandsias), Staghorn Fern (Platycerium), Euphorbia, Opuntia, bromeliads, succulents, and many others. Most weren't native to the island, but the subtropical climate made it fascinating to see these plants at their peaks, growing in and around the verandas of pink, white, green and yellow houses with terracotta roof tiles. One of the most popular types of roadside naturalised plants seemed to be aloes, particularly Aloe arborescens with its "red hot poker" style flower. They were very striking.
While wandering around in the town centre I noticed an unfamiliar butterfly, which I thought looked like a Red Admiral, and Tom thought looked like a Painted Lady. After some disagreement, the puzzling butterfly turned out to be Vanessa vulcania, the Canary Red Admiral - which does indeed look almost equidistant between the Red Admiral and Painted Lady.
Below: Tropical Tent Web Spider (Cyrtophora citricola)
A common spider in urban areas was the Tropical Tent Web Spider (Cyrtophora citricola). This is a cosmopolitan species found in Asia, Africa, Australia, Central America and southern Europe. They create large, complex, and very messy-looking webs often right next to or overlapping with one another, many with equally-unkempt looking egg sacs in the middle. These spiders can be both solitary and loosely-colonial, with each spider maintaining her individual web within the wider group.
The next day, we decided to take a long walk down the headland at Ponta de São Lourenço, an area famed for wildlife watching as well as unusual habitats.
The scenery was stunning, and the weather was quite warm, if very windy and bleak. There were a lot of Kestrels / Peneireiro-vulgar (Falco tinnunculus canariensis) flying about and hunting - they must have a lot of lizards to eat! I was surprised at how many Kestrels there actually seemed to be on the island; in the absence of corvids and many other raptors, they had taken over.
The micro-habitats and rocks were home to a huge variety of invertebrates, including tenebrionid and carabid beetles, Wolf Spiders (Hogna insularum), snails, slugs, woodlice, pseudoscorpions, millipedes, centipedes, and more. I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity of life under what seemed to be rather unforgiving terrain - humid microhabitats created in the spaces under rocks seemed to be a magnet for life. One of the small Wolf Spiders, while being photographed, suddenly grabbed a passing cockroach and indulged in a meal while we watched.
Above: Hogna insularum, who decided to grab a cockroach snack.
Below: Other Hogna specimens.
The landscape seemed fairly harsh, with hard soil and compact ground, brisk weather conditions, and lots of wind and flying dust. The creatures found here have to be able to cope with these conditions, so many of them are armoured and tough.
Some of the most common invertebrates to be found around the island are millipedes; there is a large endemic millipede fauna on Madeira. The most common species seemed to be the Portuguese Millipede (Ommatoiulus moreletii) - these millipedes could often be found in mixed-species groups under rocks, staying semi-buried in the humid areas.
Above and below: Darkling beetles (Hadrus sp.)
Above: Chrysomelids; Chrysolina sp.
Above: Bristletails (Zygentoma), identified on iNaturalist as Ctenolepisma species
The diversity of terrestrial molluscs is slightly lower at Ponta de São Lourenço than the rest of the island (source), but one snail which really stood out was the largest one, Lepatxis groviana groviana, pictured above, with its lovely textured shell and blueish skin.
The under-rock fauna was complimented well by the presence of some subterranean creatures not seen in the UK. These included some very different-looking earwigs (such as the Ring Legged Earwig, Euborellia annulipes) and a very high number of webspinners (Embioptera) which could be seen moving through their fine silk tunnels under nearly every rock.
Above: Webspinner (Embioptera) tunnel
Above: Ring Legged Earwig (Euborellia annulipes). The presence of bands on the femur separate this species from the similar-looking Maritime Earwig, both of which are listed as being found on the island.
Above: 1: Woodlouse Spider (Dysdera sp). 2: True bug nymph, maybe Peirates strepitans (Reduviidae: Hemiptera)
3: Cockroach, Loboptera sp. (Blattellidae: Blattodea)
4: Weevil (Curculionidae)
5: Centipede (Geophilomorpha: Chilopoda)
6: Pseudoscorpion
As we progressed further along the headland, the diversity of plants and animals changed. I saw my first Atlantic Canaries / Canário-da-terra (Serinus canaria), Berthelot's Pipits / Corre-caminhos (Anthus berthelotii) and a first look at some of Madeira's endemic plants, with the Madeiran Sea Stock / Goivo-da-rocha (Matthiola maderensis).
There was also a higher orthopteran diversity here, with the grasshopper Sphingonotus rubescens and the Black Cricket Gryllus bimaculatus.
1-3: Gryllus bimacularius
4: Sphingonotus rubescens.
At the small café on the final accessible headland, I found several large Southern Green Shield Bugs (Nezara viridula), an introduced species originating in mainland Africa. These bugs are spreading rapidly, and can now even be seen in parts of southern England, alongside our regular Green Shield Bugs, from which they can be differentiated by their lack of a dark wing membrane.
We found a less-walked area of natural vegetation for Tom to find isopods in; here were found the isopods Porcellio normani and Tylos madeirae, and the Banded Garden Spider (Argiope trifasciata) - a relatively common species, but a very beautiful one!
Above: 1 & 2: Porcellio normani
3: Tylos madeirana.
4 & 5: Argiope trifasciata.
Above: 1-3 Habitat shots
4: Madeira Sea Stock / Goivo-da-rocha.
I also found some additional crabs to photograph, which were a bit more tolerant than those in Machico.
Above: Crabs (Grapsidsae)
The following day, we took a trip into Funchal. The city was colourful, albeit with slightly limited wildlife - but there were a lot of very tame lizards which came out of a tree to eat a banana, and while I was photographing these I discovered I was nearly sitting on a dead Convolvulus Hawk-moth (Agrius convolvuli). Unfortunately, this was the only hawk moth I saw on this trip, but it was better than none at all!
Above and below: Madeira Wall Lizards eating banana.
That night, we did a bit of torching in town, which was more productive than I expected - as well as the typical urban cockroaches, there were some small House Centipedes (Scutigera coleoptera) and a huge Wolf Spider, while the rocks on the beach were covered in thousands and thousands of little Sea Slaters, Ligia italica. A flash of bottle green betrayed the presence of the Tube-web Spider Segestria florentina. I don't recall seeing any False Widows (Steatoda sp.) although they were probably also present around the buildings, which may well be because in the UK they are so common that I rarely give them a second glance. Steatoda nobilis, the Noble False Widow notorious for starring in many fear-mongering UK press articles, is native to Madeira and the Canaries, something I didn't know until after this holiday. It would have been great to have seen one 'in situ'.
Above: 1 & 2: Hogna 3: Segestria florentina
4 & below Ligia italica
Check out Part 2 of this trip in the following blog post - the second part contains more plant life and walking, but we did make a return visit to Ponta de São Lourenço for plenty more bugs (and some unexpected surprises!)