Besouro (hummingbird hawk-moth)

The insect known in Madeira as the besouro is Macroglossa stellatarum, of the order Lepidoptera. It appears in the afternoon to suck nectar from flowers, thereby becoming an unwitting agent in the fertilisation of various species. In its size, its manner of flight and the noise it makes when visiting flowers, it so closely resembles the hummingbird that one English traveller believed he had seen that little bird in Madeira.

The caterpillar of the Madeiran besouro feeds on a species of the genus Galium, and therefore does no damage to the plants of kitchen gardens and flower gardens. When fully fed, it burrows into the ground and there turns into a brownish chrysalis.

Following an article that Dr Nuno Silvestre Teixeira, a distinguished Funchal physician, published in the Diário de Noticias some 25 years ago, describing certain extravagant habits of European beetles (besouros), Madeirans took to calling besouros those individuals whose habits matched those the said physician attributed to these insects. The Madeiran besouro, although it also occurs in Europe, bears no resemblance or affinity whatever to the European besouro.

At nightfall another lepidopteran appears very frequently in gardens, much larger and sturdier than the Macroglossa, which Madeirans call borboletão or besouro. This insect, which also belongs to the Sphingidae, is Sphinx Convolvuli, whose larvae feed on potato leaves etc., etc. Boys often catch the borboletões when they settle on flowers to suck the nectar on which they feed.