A later start, with time to meander. Our first port of call was Canical Harbour to see if the Laughing Gull was still there. A quick scan and it was sitting down on the outer harbour wall. Some bread and left over scraps were thrown into,the sea to see if it would come. The Yellow-legged Gulls enjoyed the feast and the Laughing Gull eventually took off and flew around for a few minutes before returning to its side of the harbour and settling down again. As I had left my big camera in the car, I didn’t get any photos and after I had gone back to the car for it, it was time to move on.
Our next stop was at a ‘wetland’ at Lugar de Baixo. This was the smallest marshy wetland ever but it did hold a good population of coot, a moorhen and two Glossy Ibis, plus, of course a wide variety of Muscovy Ducks.
We stopped for lunch at a nearby restaurant, sitting out on the patio looking for seabirds but not much about and no Monk Seals either! We stopped in Funchal to check out the harbour area, we parked in a multi story and walked across to the beach area. There was a lighthouse, called the Green Lighthouse, which we walked out to but there wasn’t much beyond some xxxx flitting around the weedy area by the beach and some Sally Lightfoot crabs with enlarged claws on one side.
We decided to go back up into the hills to retry for better views of Madeiran Grayling. We were going to go back to the area we checked out before but it looked a bit murky and we found a place to park in the National Park. There were lots of Plains Swifts hawking about and we spent some time checking out the butterflies with Long-tailed Blue and Madeiran Grayling and Madeiran Small Copper.
We ate in a supermarket ‘cafe’ and then walked back to the spot we had arranged to be picked up for our night walk for Zino’s Petrel breeding site. It was quite a ride but we got there before it was completely dark. The walk out was very stressful for me as my breathing was not good. The others went on ahead and I was diverted to a lookout not so far. It meant that I didn’t hear them as well as the others, but I did record them and that worked out ok.
The walk back was even worse but eventually the very welcome sight of the lookout post was just ahead. I made it back to the van, glad that I had been but, very thankful I had made it back but I will never do that again. We were driven back to our car in Machico and then drove back to the house.
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