Madeira - Wed 15 Dec to Wed 22 Dec

Ellie and I bit the bullet and decided to head south in search of some summer sun and jetted off to the island of Madeira for a week. We stayed at a really good hotel complex in a self-catering studio. The setting was ideal, with several birds being seen in or from the hotel grounds, including Plain Swift and Canary:

Certain species were pretty common place, including Blackcaps:

We undertook a day trip to Porto Santo, which produced Rock Sparrow, Berthelot's Pipit and Spanish Sparrow amongst others. Also, of national importance for Madeira, I found a female Goosander on Tanque pond on Porto Santo. I didn't realise at the time but when I submitted my sightings on my return to the UK, I found that this was the first record of this species for the Madeiran archipeligo...a real privilege and a feather in my cap!
Up in the mountains we took a levada walk to the Balcoes viewpoint where we saw all three Madeiran endemic landbirds, Trocaz Pigeon, Madeira Firecrest, and Madeiran Chaffinch:

A trip to Lugar de Baixo was also fairly productive as we saw Common Waxbill and Green-winged Teal:

We had a fair amount of rain over the week, but it was very warm, and it was a real shock to the system when we landed back in Bristol to be faced with snow and temperatures well below freezing. To end our holiday off on a perfect note, we saw a small flock of six Waxwings feeding in roadside bushes as we drove home.