Unexpected birds on Madiera

On my second visit to Madeira I did expect to see wild canaries as they are almost as common there as house sparrows once were in the UK. What I did not expect to see were waxbills. To see a flock of around thirty of these diminutive birds feeding on seeding grassedss was a real delight. They were clearly accustomed to humans and allowed me to approach to within just a few feet. I would identify them as red-eared or common waxbills. They certainly had the expected red ear stripe and some displayed a surprising amount of red down their breasts. I know that Madeira is off the coast of Africa but it would still be a prodigious achievement for such small birds to manage such a flight and so I wonder if they are from escaped cage birds or hitched a lift on a ship. I also saw the evening flight of a single ring necked parakeet, which suggests that escapees are not that unusual.