FINSBURY FESTIVE SEASON 25/26

 FINSBURY FESTIVE SEASON 25/26

What a festive season it has been! In the two months from the beginning of December till the end of January, we have had an average of 396mm precipitation over the estate, with a high of 474mm in the north (Pebble Creek), and a low of 318mm falling at Patrick's gate in the west. I am sure that more has fallen in the north and east, but I was unable to check the gauges at these two locations for the final seven days of rain because I was unable, due to flood waters, to get to the locations, so I averaged the figures for the remaining locations for that period. 

That is a lot of rain! Fortunately, it fell gently, so there was minimal erosion and the run-off was not so dirty. Even with all this rain, the fishermen have been raving about some really good fishing (a couple of seven pounders were hooked!), and we have still been able to indulge in many activities in the mountain grasslands and forested gorges. 

I think I must have hiked the entire property over the season with a whole bunch of lovely families! We saw a lot of exciting wildlife, so below you will find a few of these. Enjoy.

This is a rather common moth species found in the Lowveld and Kruger National Park, but not common here on the estate at all. It is a Reticulate Bagnet Moth, Anaphe reticulata, but may be better known by the common name of their caterpillars: Processionary Worms.

I'm sure many of you have been to the Kruger Park in Autumn (particularly May) and seen long lines of green, hairy caterpillars, touching head to toe, as they cross the road in single file. These are what are referred to as Processionary worms and that is what it is, a procession to the nearest foodplant after resting up in a safe place.

This long line of worms travelling in single file resembles a larger organism to smaller predators and the slightly toxic hairs dissuade larger predators, so pretty good protection, then. The reason I say they are not common here on the estate is because I have never seen a procession here yet, although the main foodplants of the caterpillar do occur here. They are Crossberry bushes, Grewia occidentalis, and Wild Pear trees, Dombeya rotundifolia, both from the Hibiscus family. 

The pathfinder or leader of the procession establishes its direction (not sure how, but I would assume that the colony hatched on the host plant and that, when they first sought refuge for the night, they left a pheromone trail to follow on their return) and begins to move off while releasing a continuous strand of silk. The silk provides traction for the feet of the next individual in line who is also physically touching the one in front. The leader also releases a fresh path pheromone which enables others to follow if the line is disrupted. The second individual in line also releases a strand of silk and the pheromone to the one behind it which is also physically touching it. This continues till the end of the line which could be as much as six hundred individuals away!

Way into winter, the caterpillars would have completed their final instar and will be ready to pupate. They gather in a place which they feel is suitable, and construct a communal cocoon called a bagnet, with individual cocoons inside accommodating, once again, up to six hundred pupae! The final product looks like a dense silken handbag hanging in a bush.

Well into the following season, the adults emerge and the cycle continues. In West Africa, the bagnets are collected after pupation and the adults have vacated them. These are processed into fibres that are woven into yarn. The process has been happening for hundreds of years, at least, but more than likely thousands of years.

I featured this magnificent little milkweed plant in my blog of January 2022. I will feature it again with some added information. This individual resides in my rockery and was saved from certain death after baboons dislodged it from a cliff face near the Mountain Hatchery. Its most commonly used common name is Rosary Vine, with the proper name of Ceropegia linearis ssp. woodii.

Globally, this species is the most cultivated of all the species of the genus and is known by a huge assortment of common names like Hanging Milkwort, String of Hearts and a few variations of that, Heart Vine, Jacob's Beard and many more! 

The trailing stems grow from a bulb between rock surfaces and at each node, a pair of leaves, flowers or even new bulbs can grow. The heart-shaped leaves are succulent and arranged neatly in pairs and if the plant resides in a spot that offers dappled shade, marbled or variegated leaves develop, like in this specimen. The leaves develop a plain, dark green colouration in complete shade. 

The strange looking flowers are extraordinary little traps and are of a similar design throughout the genus. They have a swollen base and a long tube that has four lobes on top that join at the tip to form four windows (openings) that emit a very specific odour that attracts its small pollinators, Jackal Flies from the Millichiidae family. 

These flies are called Jackal flies because they are scavengers that feed off the leaked juices from unfortunate insects that have been captured by predators like spiders, assassin bugs and Robber flies. When an insect is attacked, it releases defensive volatiles which have a very specific scent. The flies are attracted to this scent and approach the scene and, like jackals, hang around the predator while it eats its prey and snatch bits that leak out or are discarded.

The fly is attracted by this odour thinking it is an insect in distress. Instead, it finds this strange flower. It enters the window to find maroon nectar guides that lead it down towards the tube where it suddenly gets very slippery and the fly falls down the tube into the swollen chamber where the fused anthers and stigma reside with the nectar and pollinia (bags of pollen). The tube is filled with stiff down-facing hairs that allow the fly to fall down, but do not allow the fly to climb up again. This imprisons the fly for six to twelve hours in the chamber. At the base of the chamber are very precisely positioned patches of nectar which forces the fly to position its body in the correct way as to firmly clip the pollinia onto its mouthparts. 

There is sufficient nectar in the nectary to ensure the fly's comfortable survival until the flower droops to the horizontal or more, the stiff hairs relax, and the fly is allowed to exit its temporary prison and fly off in search of a real source of food!

The pollinarium clipped to the mouthparts are extremely uncomfortable for the fly, and so it usually spends some time trying to groom the things off, but they are firmly clipped there. This grooming process is important because it usually turns the pollen bags inside out, so that the cleft which attaches to the guide rail in the following flower is exposed. This ensures that the cleft does not attach to the guide rail of the original flower, avoiding cross-pollination while the fly is incarcerated and stumbling around searching for a way out.

If the poor fly finds another flower instead of a real source of food through this incredible deception by the Rosary Vine, it will inevitably slip down into the flower tube again and attempt to access the small patches of nectar the flower so deviously offers so as to position its body so that it connects with the guide rail which collects the pollinarium with glee! 

Wow! What an elaborate design. After successful pollination, the ovary develops into a follicle, a double horn-shaped seed pod that splits horizontally and exposes many flat seeds with long hairs attached. The change in the moisture in the air around the seeds when the follicle splits, causes the hairs to begin to spread open to form a parachute for the seeds that are then dispersed by the wind. These seeds are characteristic of the Milkweed family, the Apocynaceae. What a crazy little succulent! 

Ceropegia: keros = (greek) wax; pege = (greek) fountain, referring to the flower that resembles a wax fountain.

Diachea leucopodia - White-footed Slime

Stemonitis splendens - Chocolate Tube Slime

Five years ago, in December twenty-twenty, I discovered my first Slime mould on the estate. With this discovery, I proudly added an entirely new KINGDOM to our Finsbury biodiversity list, the Protozoa, single-celled organisms, of which the amoeba you studied in biology class belongs, together with numerous others and these slime moulds.

Let me quickly give you a reminder of how taxonomy in the natural world works, and you will appreciate what a milestone a new Kingdom was for me:

Biological Taxonomy is the classification of all living organisms into taxa (singular taxon), showing their relationship with other organisms. It consists of eight main taxa, from the vaguest to the most specific. As an example I will use an iconic Finsbury animal we all know: The LEOPARD, and show you how it is classified taxonomically:

Domain: ARCHAEA - This taxon includes all living organisms except for bacterium, which are grouped in their own domain.

Kingdom: ANIMALIA - This taxon includes all eukaryotes that can move around in search of food. On the estate, I have found representatives for the kingdoms Protozoa (single-celled organisms like these Slime Moulds); Animalia; Plantae; and Fungi.

Phylum: CHORDATA - All animals that share a nerve chord. Other phyla in the animalia kingdom include Annelida (earthworms and co.), Mollusca (snails and slugs), Arthropoda (insects, ticks, spiders, mites, scorpions, crabs, millipedes etcetera).

Class: MAMMALIA - All chordates that nurse their babies with milk from mammary glands. Other classes in the Chordata phylum include Amphibia (frogs and toads), Reptilia (snakes, lizards and tortoises), and Aves (birds).

Order: CARNIVORA - All animals exhibiting the carnassial sheer, premolar teeth with cutting edges enabling the animal to cut through meat like a scissors. Other orders in the class mammalia include the Artiodactyla (antelope, pigs, giraffes), Perissodactyla (zebras and rhinos), Rodentia (rats, mice and porcupines), Chiroptera (bats), Lagomorpha (rabbits and hares), etcetera.

Family: FELIDAE - All cats. Other families in the Carnivora class include Canidae (dogs), Viverridae (genets and civets), Mustelidae (honey badgers, otters and co.), Hyaenidae (hyaenas and aardwolf) and Herpestidae (Mongooses).

Genus: PANTHERA - All the cats that have an elastic ligament attaching their oesophagus to the skeleton, allowing the throat to vibrate, creating a deep growl when required. Other genera in the Felidae family include Leptailurus (servals), Felis (wild cats and the domestic cat), Acinonyx (cheetahs) and Caracal (caracals). 

Species: PARDUS - Leopard and all its subspecies. Other species in the genus Panthera are lions (Panthera leo), jaguars (Panthera onca), tigers (Panthera tigris) and the snow leopard (Panthera uncia).

So far, I have identified seven different species of slime mould on the estate, including these two new ones! 

This is a description of the standard slime mould life cycle:

A single spore finds itself in a suitable environment, it germinates a few flagellated (have a tail for movement) protoplasts called Swarm Cells (not to be confused with a bee hive). These cells move around their environment eating bacteria and other microorganisms.

When they meet up with a potential mate they form a zygote and grow into a plasmodia as they split nuclei. A plasmodia is defined as a living structure of cytoplasm that contains many nuclei, instead of individual cells each with a nucleus. This plasmodia, which resembles slime or foam, feeds on more bacteria and other microorganisms and grows in size as other zygotes "swarm" to join and become an interconnected network of protoplasmic strands, with each strand's cytoplasmic contents streaming back and forth within itself. 

When this mass of single-celled organisms, that now behave like a multi-cellular organism, wants to move, the strand's contents stream in the required direction while protoplasm is withdrawn from the rear, allowing it to move at a top speed of about one millimetre per hour, leaving a snail trail behind. 

When food becomes scarce, the slime mould's behaviour becomes more fungus like and dries, forming a crust to which the nuclei migrate from within the cytoplasmic mass. This crust forms fungus-like fruiting bodies (both photos above), resembling minute mushrooms, that produce millions of spores that are released into the air, and the cycle continues. 

What a beauty! This is a Mole Snake, Pseudaspis cana, and it is a very big snake. This individual was almost one-and-a-half meters long and five centimetres thick at its thickest part! And that is not fat, it's muscle, lots of it. I know this because the snake lunged at me, lifting and throwing its thick body straight at me! This photo was taken moments before it lunged, and it didn't allow me to take further shots. Very aggressive indeed.

They are daytime active, non-venomous, and are equipped with very sharp teeth to help subdue rodents in their burrows. The juveniles are spotted and blotched and colourful, while the adults are plain-coloured. They occur throughout the southern half of Africa, and in the south of their range, are shiny black, in Mpumalanga and Limpopo they are the colour of the one in the photo. Further north they become greyer in colour.

 They spend a lot of time in animal burrows, seeking refuge in them when they are inactive, and searching them for food when hunting. Their main food are molerats (see blog of July 2020), who establish large burrow systems to accommodate their colonies. The snake can sometimes be found with half of its body protruding from a molehill, where the other half is inside the molerat's tunnel, waiting for the molerat to come along the passage. 

Now, if you check the blog from July 2020, you will see that the molerat has enormous incisor teeth that are used to dig its burrows. These teeth are dangerous to the snake, so I think the scars that are clearly visible on the top of the head of the snake in the picture may have been caused by a molerat retaliating to being eaten. Male Mole Snakes are also renowned for fighting aggressively during the breeding season (around October), and often inflict major wounds on each other, so if the snake in the photo is a male, that could also be the cause of the scarring on the head.

These snakes also capture and eat any other rodents, while the juveniles prefer reptiles, particularly lizards. Because of this, juveniles frequent rocky places while adults frequent the soft grasslands. The adults are also well-known egg eaters, particularly those of penguins on the west coast and the eggs of the Karoo Prinia in the Karoo, which are robbed from the nest. This is interesting, because egg-eater snakes have special adaptions that allow them to eat eggs, crush the shells, which are then separated from the contents and discarded while the contents are swallowed. The mole snake simply swallows the eggs whole!

The Mole Snake is also viviparous, which means it gives birth to live young, and it is one of only seven snakes on the planet that can have as much as one hundred babies at a time! The record holder is a puff adder that gave birth to 157 babies in a sitting! The other Southern African snakes in this group are the Mole Snake and the African python, who unlike the puffie and mole snake, lay eggs.

Finally, since the mole snake is diurnal, it spends its nights in the deserted burrows of other animals, its enemy while in its burrow would be Honey Badgers who like to dig for their subterranean prey items. In the day, only large raptors and land predators would be a threat to such a large, aggressive snake. 

I have featured cicada bugs before in my blogs of Springtime 2024, where I featured an unknown species emerging from its exuviae (final instar skin that is shed above the ground), and Autumn 2022 where I featured an empty exuviae of an unknown species.

This is a Cicada bug that I photographed some time ago but have finally managed to identify! It is a Hairy Orange-wing Cicada, Platypleura hirta, and, like most cicadas, it is very specific about which trees it sucks its juices from. 

This is the species we will encounter in the open grasslands sucking juices from our Silvery Sugarbushes, Protea roupelliae (the same protea that the Guerney's Sugarbird associates with). In forested areas, they associate with another tree from the same family, the African Beechwood, Faurea saligna, so if you see a cicada (or hear) on any of these two trees, it will be of this species.

This is a life history description I have given before in those blogs:

Cicadas are best known to us by the loud, high-pitched, incessant buzzing sound that the males produce to attract the attention of a potential mate. The females hear this with their tympanal organs which pick-up and analyse sounds, particularly the mating buzz of the males. The males also have these hearing organs but must disconnect them when calling because the sound he produces can reach, in some species, one hundred and twenty decibels (a gunshot is around 130db) and that would damage his own hearing.

If you manage to catch one of these bugs and turn it on its back, it is easy to distinguish between male and females: The female will have a sharp, scythe-like appendage (ovipositor) at the tip of her abdomen while the male will not. Instead, he will have two semi circular plates at the rear underside of his abdomen which cover his sound-producing organs. Both sexes' "ears" are situated here in the abdomen too. The sound-producing organ of the male are, in effect, two separate membranes supported by powerful muscles that vibrate and "pop" the membranes up and down, very much the same as you pressing the bottom of a tin in and out. Most of the remainder of the male's abdomen is hollow which helps amplify the sound. The hollow cavity in the males' abdomen also has folded membranes on each side that can be unfolded and re-folded to adjust the volume of the sound produced and when the bug calls it constantly adjusts the volume and this helps to create a ventriloquist type of scenario where it is difficult for predators (and curious human beings) to pin-point the insect.

Once the female responds to the mating call and mating is complete, she will cut a slit into the bark of a branch or twig and lay an egg within, repeating this process until she has laid all her eggs. After about six weeks, the nymphs hatch from the egg and drop onto the floor and immediately burrow into the ground with their powerful, folding forelimbs. They dig down until they encounter the roots of a plant and then create a little chamber in which they will reside while they puncture the root and the xylem within with their rigid proboscis and suck the juices out. The xylem is the vascular pathway that transports water and minerals from the roots to the rest of the plant.

These Cicada nymphs will reside underground, burrowing from root to root, until they are fully developed. Most species are referred to as "annual cicadas" and their nymphs will spend from two to nine years feeding like this underground before they are fully developed and ready to transform into an adult. But at least two species in North America (and more than likely in Africa too) are referred to as "periodic cicadas" and they synchronise their breeding and egg-laying activities so that the nymphs emerge thirteen and seventeen years later respectively en masse! This strategy is employed to increase the survival rate of the insect by flooding the "market" with youngsters so that, even with a high predation rate, the survival rate will be adequate for the species' survival. Also, it reduces the chances of a specialised predator from evolving because the long time frame between the emergence of the generations is longer than most insect will live, forcing them to find other prey species. 

Periodic cicadas or not, when the nymph emerges from underground, it climbs up the base of a tree trunk and secures itself there with its powerful forelegs and rests. After a while, the skin on the back of the nymph splits open and the adult slowly emerges, wings and all. Adults retain productive mouthparts and, instead of feeding underground from the roots of a plant, they puncture the stem of the plant above ground and suck the juices from there. The big rounded "nose", easily visible on the nymph and the adult, houses the pumping muscles that suck the fluids from the host plant. If one manages to find a bunch of these insects together on a branch of a tree, one can safely deduce that it comprises a mixed sex grouping at a feeding site.     

We were hiking north of Goudkoppies when we flushed a Cape Longclaw, Macronyx capensis, from a small clump of long grass in a field of shorter grasses. Cape Longclaws are one of the more common birds found in our open grasslands, where the nasal cat-like meeow is a regular sound. We approached the spot where the bird was flushed from and found this beautifully constructed nest on the floor between two tufts of long grass, with the long leaves of the grass bent over, covering the nest from above.

Longclaws are a small genus of birds that are closely related to pipits, with the major difference being the presence of a very long claw on the "thumbs" of the feet. When the foot is opened the foot and claw measure more than seventy millimetres in length, that's more than a third of the bird's bodies' full length! This long claw is supposed to be an adaption for walking on the top of grass tufts, like someone wearing snowshoes in the snow. Strangely, though, Longclaws do not usually walk on the tops of grass tufts, they normal walk on the ground beneath the grass sward in search of arthropod prey!

A monogamous pair establish a bond that persists for as long as they are both alive. They then establish a territory in open grassland, which the male advertises with songs from a perch and singing while performing a simple advertisement flight by combining a fluttering flight with song before dropping abruptly into the grass. If an intruding longclaw enters his territory, the male will attack, and believe me, I have witnessed a pair of closely related Yellow-throated Longclaws fighting near Ship Mountain in the Kruger Park, they fight very violently.

On that occasion, I stopped our game drive vehicle beside a pair that were fighting while, what looked like a female, watched on. They paid no attention to the huge vehicle that stopped right beside them, because they were so intent on killing each other. There was blood and feathers all over the place and on both participants! We landed up leaving due to time constraints before the outcome was reached, but I'm sure they were both badly injured afterwards. I hope she was worth it!

Once they have mated, the male accompanies the female while she gathers nest material and constructs the nest as in the photograph, and then she lays two or three eggs within. She incubates the eggs for a fortnight while the male brings her meals of insects to sustain her.

Once the chicks hatch, both sexes feed them for a further fortnight before they are ready to leave the nest for the first time. This is when the kids learn to fly while they accompany their parents for a few weeks while the parents teach them what to eat and how to gather what they eat.

They mostly forage on the ground by scraping termite colony tunnels and exposing them, chasing down beetles and other ground dwellers, and sometimes by perching on the edge of a branch and hawking flying insects. They also sometimes eat green grass seeds which they prune from the upright inflorescences.

All the literature I have read through regarding the Transvaal Dwarf Chameleon, Bradypodion transvaalense, suggests that it is beholden to the small pockets of forest in our grasslands. And indeed, I have always found them in those forests or, at least, in the forest edges or riparian bush along the rivers.

This chap, on the other hand, was encountered in the relatively short, open grasslands high up in our neighbouring Emoyeni property. Not even a small tree within sight in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree radius! If it was looking for a forest, it was very lost! It did, however, appear quite content, so I think its presence in a treeless environment was by intent.

These odd reptiles are an African thing, only occurring naturally on this continent and her islands, with half of all species restricted to Madagascar alone. There is one species indigenous to southern Europe and a few species in south-western Asia, all obviously radiating out of Africa.

There are five features that sets these unique reptiles apart from all other lizards: The ability to change colour which helps hide them from predators and from their prey; the arrangement of digits on the hands and feet opposite to each other (zygodactyl), enabling them to cling tightly to branches and twigs; Their remarkable ability to focus each eye in a different direction, an ability which is still not entirely understood; the presence of a prehensile tail (a tale that can grab hold of things), enabling them to climb more efficiently; and, of course, their long, sticky tongue that can shoot out of its mouth and entrap prey as far away as the full length of the chameleon's body!

This is a Leafcutter Bee from the Megachile genus of typical bees. They are called leafcutter bees because they cut leaves up into flat sheets that they use to construct the walls of the chambers they build in an existing hole in wood. Those "Wasp Hotels", a block of wood with numerous different diameter holes drilled into it that you hang in your garden, are designed for these bees and their relatives.

These bees collect pollen just like honeybees do, except the main differences are that these bees are solitary and that these bees do not make honey as a source of energy during the winter.

Firstly, the female bee finds a suitable existing hole in the surface of a log or twig or any other object. She then flies to a nearby tree and lands on the flat surface of a leaf. She then cuts the leaf around herself so that she leaves a neat hole in the leaf. She uses the neatly cut leaf disk to line the inside of the hole she has identified.

She then divides this lined hole into separate sections, separated by folded green leaves, creating cells which are stacked one after the other over the entire length of the hollow passage. Each cell is stuffed with pollen, an egg is laid within, and the cell is sealed off from the following one.

After a suitable time, the egg hatches and the larva (maggot) emerges and eats the pollen, moults a few times, and then spins a silken cocoon around itself within its cell and pupates. The adult emerges usually in the following season, and the males go in search of a female and, after mating, promptly die. The females remain alive long enough to build the cells to nourish their offspring. And so the cycle continues...

This is another special type of bee that I encountered on one of my hikes during December. It is a White-barred Cuckoo Bee, Thyreus delumbatus. Another common name for the bee is Curved Cloak-and-dagger Bee. Both names indicate that this bee is deceptive in some or other manner. 

And it sure is: It is a parasite of the Megachile Leafcutter bee that I have just featured before this! This bee even resembles its host, as you can see, which helps it sneak around its host relatively undetected.

The Cuckoo bee finds a female Leafcutter bee and follows her at a discrete distance until it discovers where the Leafcutter is preparing cells for its offspring. She waits till the Leafcutter is gone off to collect more pollen which she is busy stuffing into one of her cells. The Cuckoo bee enters the chamber and lays an egg within, before the Leafcutter lays her egg. The Cuckoo bee then exits and hides nearby until the Leafcutter has moved on to her next cell and the activity is repeated until the Leafcutter is finished.

The Cuckoo bee's larvae hatch before the larva of the Leafcutter and eat all the pollen. When the larva of the Leafcutter bee hatches, it is confronted by a monster instead of tasty pollen! The larva of the Cuckoo bee then eats the Leafcutter larva too!!! Not a nice world out there if one is an insect, that's for sure!

If one notices that a green part of a plant is wilting, it is often worthwhile to approach the plant to see why. In this case, the wilted section of plant was infested with aphids, the bugs that suck the juices from the plant. When I approached this particular plant, I found the aphids were being attended to by Hairy Sugar ants, Camponotus niveosetosus, while they solicited honeydew from the aphids.

I mentioned some amazing facts about the fecundity of aphids in my July 2019 blog, adding how important their enemies were in keeping their numbers down. The aphids though, are certainly not taking things lying down and actively employ guards to protect themselves when the opportunity presents itself.

In this case the aphids attract ants with a sweet excretion called honeydew, which is the still-nutritious waste of the copious amounts of plant sap that they consume. These big, aggressive ants become protective of the sapsuckers and defend them against enemies like Ladybirds, their larva and others (like Lacewing larvae).

 

And on the very last day of January, I conducted one of those bird walks where there are literally zero birds, and, while staring forlornly up, for non-existent birds, in the Steenkamps' forest, I noticed this most delicate string of flowers hanging from the branch of one of the forest trees. It is a new species of orchid for our Finsbury list and is called a Common Summer Tree Orchid, Mystacidium flannaganii. 

In my "Winter 2023" bog I featured a close relative of this, M. gracile, which resembles this as well, although its flowers are bigger and less numerous. I initially thought this was the same species but was puzzled by the flowering time, because M. gracile flowers at the end of winter, while this one flowers in mid-summer.

Check that blog out to get an idea of the pollination of the plant, which is affected by Settling Moths during the night. The flower begins producing nectar, in those elongated spurs, just after sundown until just before sunrise. The resultant odour attracts these moths who rest on the tiny flower and dip their extremely long, straw-like mouthparts into the spur to extract the nectar, collecting pollen at the same time to deposit on the following flower.

I had to return later with a ladder from the workshop to enable me to reach the plant and photograph it, allowing me to identify it, and as is expected in the crazy rules of life, I spotted a male and female African Finfoot in S6 on the way, birds that I would have given a left leg for the day before! 

That's it for the festive season! It was fun, fun and more fun. See you soon...

SPRINGTIME 2025

 

Spring rains came nice and early this season with gentle falls in mid-September to get the season going. Then, October brought an average of 50mm to the estate, also nice and softly. Soft rain is important because there is less run-off and more absorption into the aquifers that are the estate (that's why we are a water catchment reserve). It also gives the vegetation time to germinate and root, binding the soils so that they are not washed away.

November was a tempestuous month with high winds and some violent storms delivering an average of 224mm across the estate, which is 1mm below the annual average for the month. There certainly was more run off because of the quantity of water that fell, but the rivers remained relatively clean because the softer rain from the previous months allowed the vegetation to thrive and bind the soils.

The photo of Mount Anderson above, taken from above and to the south of Little Joker mine in Emoyeni, gives an idea of how green the estate was in the middle of November. It is a lot lusher and more verdant as I write now, at the beginning of December!

Below is a little gallery of some of the exciting things I encountered during the Spring of 2025:

I have three cameras set up on the estate. One in the picnic spot parking, one at K24, and one on Loop Road. Between the three of them, they have recorded seventeen mammal species over the last three months. These include: 

1. Common Duiker
2. Grey Rhebuck
3. Mountain Reedbuck
4. Bushbuck
5. Kudu
6. Eland
7. Warthog
8. Bushpig
9. Baboon
10. Porcupine
11. Water Mongoose
12. Large-spotted Genet
13. Civet
14. Honey Badger
15. Side-striped Jackal
16. Leopard
17. Aardwolf

Seven carnivora species and six antelope species is a good count, especially considering that, besides the Aardwolf and Side-striped Jackal, the remainder of the species were recorded multiple times at all three locations!

But the one that has me the most excited at the moment is the Aardwolf, which was photographed on Loop Road just before ten in the evening on the 22nd of September (pictured above)!

I know that the Aardwolf, Proteles cristatus, is supposed to occur here, and Charles Stewart from Jackpot Cottage has seen a few of them on the estate in the past (although I don't think for a long time now), and also, I had a member's guest once describe an animal that they saw at K9 one night, leaving no doubt that it was an Aardwolf. But I have never laid eyes on one here at Finsbury myself! I've also, till now, never caught one on one of our camera traps before in all the twelve years I've been using them here on the estate. Pretty cool to have my first photo, albeit not a great one!

Looking at the way the hair on its back is raised, I think the infra-red from the camera must have spooked it or something, because it has raised its body-mane. They can also raise a mane on their necks, and when they are side on in full display with all their hairs raised, they can make their bodies appear seventy-five percent bigger than what they actually are! Enough to give any potential predator a second thought.

They are remarkable animals, being in the hyaena family but adapted to eating termites almost exclusively, unlike the other members of the family who are scavengers and also formidable carnivorous predators. They also concentrate on one genus of termites, the Trinervitermis genus, Snouted Harvester termites, like the ones that dominate the termite landscape here on the estate.

Snouted Harvester termites, Trinervitermis trinervoides, like other harvester termites, are termites that have to leave the safety of their mounds to collect their food, which consists mainly of blades of grass, cut into small pieces (hence "harvester"), which are brought back to the mound and put into storage. They come out in the night, in their tens of thousands, to harvest this grass. Unlike other harvester termites whose soldiers have massive jaws that can snip an ant clean in half, or even give a human a nice pinch, the Snouted Harvester's soldiers have a long, hypodermic tube protruding from their faces called a fontanellar gun, from which, when defending the workers, they expel a strand of poisonous snot that chases most predators away!

This poisonous snot is made up of terpenes, which are unsaturated hydrocarbons produced mainly by plants to make their leaves taste bad or to make their flowers smell good to certain pollinators, amongst other things. So, terpenes are pungent and have a bad taste... Terpenes are also produced in putrid meat, producing a bitter taste....

Aha! Now we can begin to see how a member of the hyaena family could go on to evolve the eating habits of this species. Hyaenas have long evolved an ability to tolerate terpenes because of their presence in rotting carcasses, which hyaenas devour with glee. Aardwolves can consume a quarter-of-a-million, about a kilogram, of Snouted harvester termites in one night, removing more than one-hundred-million termites in a year! Lots of stinky terpenes in all that. 

Socially, they have a similar system to jackals, where the male and female form a monogamous bond that prevails throughout their lives. They both actively defend a small, common territory by marking, pasting (like other hyaenas) and pursuing trespassers. With up to ten burrows per territory, the male and female do not sleep together in the same burrow, often not even nearby to each other. They also forage alone, unless accompanied by one or more cubs after weaning and before they are chased out. The male does, however, guard the entrance to the female's burrow, when the cubs are still too young, while she goes foraging, usually for up to six hours.

When an aardwolf forages, it does so by sound. As I have experienced, if one is quiet enough, a human can actually hear harvester termites snipping the grass blades while they harvest them. Aardwolves have very acute hearing, enabling them to pick up harvester termites while they are some distance away. They then approach the termites, and with a long, very broad tongue, they lick the termites up off the floor, together with their loads of grass and all the sand particles around them. Consequently, aardwolves generate enormous scats, made up almost entirely of sand and grass, which it buries in a shallow oval-shaped midden near territorial boundaries.

Aardwolves are abundant and usually quite commonly seen where they do occur. The reason, I believe, that they are not so common here on the estate, is because our rainfall is a little too high at over 900mm per annum. There band of tolerance is usually areas that have a rainfall between 100 and 800mm per annum, drier than where we are. 

Very, very exciting!

Look at this shiny, golden Tortoise Beetle! It looks like a gold nugget. It is called a Fool's Gold Tortoise Beetle, Aspidimorpha tecta, and it belongs to the Leaf Beetle (Chrysomelidae) family. This is one of the biggest families in the insect world, but all members have some things in common, particularly the fact that all of the species' larvae eat leaves and all adults that do eat, eat vegetation.

The larvae of the Tortoise beetles resemble flat worms with a long, flat "tail" (anal fork, or more technically, caudal furca) that can fold itself up over the body, like an umbrella. Then, it has the most interesting of anuses, by the fact that the anus can protrude itself telescopically for some distance. What is all this for, you may ask?

Well, once the larva hatches from the egg, which is deposited, by the mother beetle, on the species' chosen food plant, the larva immediately begins to feed. It digests these leaf pieces within an hour and, when ready to excrete droppings, it does the most fascinating thing: It folds the anal fork over its back like an umbrella. Then its anal opening begins to protrude up and above the underside (now facing the sky because it is folded over its back) of the anal fork. It then excretes its droppings so that they collect on top of the folded anal fork. It then excretes a droplet of "glue" on top of this, which glues the droppings to the top of the umbrella. 

Later, when the insect moults, it glues these moulted skins to the debris pile on top of the umbrella. This umbrella is carried closely over the larva and, with the debris pile on top, provides protection by helping to conceal the larva from predators. The droppings on the brollie also contain all the chemical defences that were in the leaves that it ate, like tannins and terpenes which offer further protection.

The adult (pictured) also has some special defensive features, most notably its tortoise-like carapace that covers its entire body and flair out at the base so that, if threatened, the beetle folds its legs in and the carapace sits flat on the floor while its body is retracted into its "shell", just like a tortoise. It can also, as seen in the photo, extend a single antenna out through the slit in the front, like a telescope on a submarine, to sense if the danger has passed.

If molested, like when I picked it up, the colour on the carapace changes from gold to a reddish-brown colour, and once the danger has passed and the beetle relaxes again, the carapace changes back to gold. The bright reddish-brown colour is a type of aposematic colouration, which is when an insect is brightly coloured to warn potential predators that they are toxic and will harm the predator if it is eaten.

All these defences keep this little adult beetle alive for the whole month of its existence, while it searches for a mate so that it can complete its life cycle

What a work of art! The face of a Lappet moth caterpillar, Eutricha obscura, a pretty common caterpillar to be found on the estate during the Springtime. 

The long hairs on the caterpillar may be beautiful, but they are poisonous and so one should avoid touching them. If you brush a part of your body against the caterpillar, the hairs break off into your skin and urticarial weals (hives) will form almost immediately, causing some discomfort. In more serious cases, the entire affected limb will swell, and systemic reactions may result in vomiting and anaphylaxis. If you have brushed against one, the best way to remove the hairs is to cover the area with duct tape and then to peel it off, removing the poisonous hairs at the same time.

The adult is a large, very boring, brown moth with a wingspan of about 70mm. The mouthparts are reduced, so the adult does not eat at all, meaning that it is short-lived, only long enough for the males to find the females, to mate, and for her to lay her eggs on the chosen host plant, which, in the case of this species, includes multiple species from different families. Host plants on the estate include Acacia species, White Stinkwood trees, Velvet Bushwillow trees and our invasive Patula Pines.

If you find crowds of tiny white mushrooms on bare soil, then you are possibly in for a feast! They may be Termitomyces microcarpus, mushrooms that are associated with termites and their nests. They are the result of an amazing farming culture that evolved in many termites well over three hundred million years ago (we only started farming twelve to thirteen thousand years ago!). 

Although termites can assimilate the dead vegetation that they collect as food, the nutritional quality of the food is not as high as is required the seer the many complex different castes that the termites require to have a fully functioning eusocial colony. So the termites gather up the dead vegetation and bring it into a group of chambers strategically positioned within the mound so that they remain at a relatively constant temperature with a consistently high moisture content. 

They pile the vegetation on top of itself until it forms a shape that is not unlike a human brain. Because the conditions are so favourable, Termitomyces microcarpus fungus grows on the vegetation, consuming it. The termites, when they require high quality food to raise special castes like reproductives or secondary / tertiary queens, harvest the fungus and feed it to the relevant larvae. The definition of farming! When the colony requires more workers, the nursemaids feed the larva normal vegetation from the pile in storage and, because it is not very nutritious, the larva grows into an adult worker that has no wings or genitalia.

At this time of the year, the termites allow the fruiting bodies of the fungus to grow so that the fungus can reproduce. It is edible for us and, although they are small, they are plentiful. I harvested a bunch of them and enjoyed the taste when they were raw so much, that I had finished them by the time I returned home so could not cook them to taste. 

There is another common mushroom that occurs here on the estate that associates with termitaria. it is a Podaxis termitophilus and although it is associated with termite mounds in its range, it can survive without the termites and vice versa. The Podaxis fungus appears to grow from the faeces of the termites within the mound and there is no evidence that the termites eat the fungus or utilise it in any way. It seems like a commensal relationship where the mushroom benefits and the termite is not affected.

This is a Lydenburg Opal, Chrysoritis aethon, a small, rather special butterfly, restricted to this area. Although the butterfly was first collected in 1879, near Lydenburg, it was only properly recognised by Pennington (the famous lepidopterist), also near Lydenburg, when the gold rush was in full swing, in 1934.

In almost all ecosystems in which ants exist, they dominate in sheer numbers and ecologically as the major predator of arthropods. This dominance attracts associations with other species in the same ecological system and, generally, positive associations between ants and other species, be they plants, fungi, molluscs, insects or other arthropods, even birds, are called myrmecophily, which means "love of ants". Most myrmecophiles benefit defensively from ants' aggression and numbers, be it out in the field like scale insects (blog of June 2021, also aphids October 2020), or within the ants' nest (This butterfly and more than half of the butterflies in the Lycaenid family) like, my favourite example, the Hoover mite. This little mite has been used by ants for so long as a vacuum cleaner that it only survives in ants' nests. They are provided with safe, warm and cozy accommodations, in return for eating up all the nests litter, unwanted bacterium and harmful fungi. Many of these associations are "facultative", meaning they are not necessary for the survival of the species involved, but are a benefit. Like with the wax scales and the aphids. The Lydenburg Opal, the majority of Lycaenids (and the little Hoover mite), are obligatory myrmecophiles. This means that they need the association with the ants for their species' survival.

This is how it unfolds: The female butterfly searches for a species of host plant, in this case a Quilted Bluebush, very common on the estate, but she does not settle for one until she finds it infested with Cocktail ants, Crematogaster genus, while they are tending to facultative myrmecophiles like aphids or wax scales, or the site of a Cocktail ant colony's nest (see blog of July 2020). Only then does she lay a single egg amongst the ants, and the ants immediately pick the egg up and carry it back to their nest where it will be protected until it hatches. 

Once the caterpillar hatches, it exits the ant nest during the hours of darkness, following the well-used ant trail, feeds on the Bluebush and returns to the nest by dawn. All the caterpillar has to do is produce a small drop of extra-rich honeydew for the ants when they ask (by stroking the caterpillar with their antennae) in return for the accommodation and protection from these normally extremely aggressive predatory ants!

The caterpillar repeats this routine until it has passed through all of its instars and is ready to pupate, which it does within the safety of the ant's nest.

Very cute little Warthog piglets who have temporarily lost their mother up on Majubane road. The piglets are born altricial (compare with precocial), which means they were blind and naked, and they had to spend the first two-plus weeks in a burrow, being fed and looked after by mom alone. Once their eyes had opened and they were able to run and keep up with mom, then they would leave the burrow and accompany mom on her daily routine, which is the stage I found them in here, and there are lots of them spread all over the estate at this time of the year.

From here, once they gather a bit of strength, Ma will join up with the sounder (which she had left to birth, suckle, and get her piglets to this stage. On her own), which consists of her mother, sisters and or cousins and aunts, whoever still remains. The sounder breaks up and separates as it gets too big, but females know who's who in the zoo, in their relatively large home range.

The males, on the other hand, stay with their sisters after being abandoned by their mothers, as a sibling group. After they mature, the females may join with others from another home range and form a new sounder or go back to mom's sounder and carry on. The males will form a little bachelor group, usually two to four boys, related or not, and become best buddies as they leave the sibling group and enter the big, wide world, which is filled with danger and adventure. They will wrestle and wrastle with each other and establish their dominance within the group. After a year or more, the more dominant boy will become less and less social and a lot more aggressive. 

He will leave the group, the home range, and enter new ranges, his testes will grow to massive proportions, and he will become a breeding boar. Unfriendly and unliked. But he will get all the girls, if anybody likes it or not. Well, not really, because he will have to battle it out with boars with similar intent. A tough life lies ahead of him if he wants to breed. 

Anyway, woe betide any predator that tries to mess with him! Big boar pigs have an extreme attitude towards enemies, and most of those enemies, including adult leopards, avoid them. 

The other boars will also become less friendly and more aggressive. And ultimately solitary, hoping the big guy dies sooner rather than later, so they have a chance to take over. They will venture into neighbouring home ranges and try their luck.

On the very western side of the Zebra trail along the high-altitude mountain stream that falls over the Troutkloof waterfalls, there is a nice little pool where I take a drink before ascending to the top of Goudkoppies. At this little crystal-clear pool, as with most others, if you look carefully at the bottom, you will most likely see strange little insects of differing sizes that resemble the one in the photo.

They are Mayfly nymphs which are also discussed in blogs of September 2019 (nymphs) and September 2020 (adult). As mentioned there, the adults are very short-lived and their only function is to find a mate and mate and lay eggs. Their short adult life is attributed to the fact that the mouthparts are fused and so the insect is unable to feed. Their tummies are filled with air which makes them rather buoyant and so when there is a "hatch" you will find a cloud of adult males dancing lightly in the air above the water. The egg-laden female detects these clouds of males and flies into it when a male will grab her from underneath with his long, double-jointed forelegs which bend awkwardly backwards and hold her wings closed and out of the way for the brief moment he mates with her in mid-air.

To achieve this, the male has double eyes, a top pair to solely seek the female, and a lower pair for normal activities. The nymph in the picture is therefore a well-developed male by the presence of double eyes and wing buds. Anyway, the male dies immediately thereafter while the female will just have enough resources to develop her eggs, which are only a quarter of a millimetre in length, and then fly across the surface of the water depositing them one-by-one as she dips her abdomen in the water. These minute eggs sink to the bottom and rest for about three weeks before hatching into tiny nymphs who swallow detritus, extract the nutrients, and excrete the rest. The larvae moult about twenty times over a period of six months up to two years, depending on the species.

These are Leopard scats that we found on the Elephant path running east of Kliprots Creek. And, yes, they consist of porcupine quills almost entirely, just like their scats after consuming a furry animal consists of the fur of that animal almost entirely. Well, porcupine quills are exactly that: the animal's fur. It is just that porcupine fur is modified, by being hollow and rigid, for protection from predators, not just the environment.

I find it amazing that the hard, straight quills manage to navigate the animals' intestines without mishap! I remember, on a few occasions, finding lion scats in the bush that were filled with the longest of quills, and the same thoughts crossed my mind.

It is a risky proposition for a leopard to take on a porcupine, because it can become impaled by the porcupine's quills, which the leopard can often remove, but sometimes it is in a place the leopard can't reach. The big male leopard that killed Charlie Swart on the Matjulu river bridge near Berg-en-Dal camp in the late nineties was injured by the quills of a porcupine. After it was shot, the sergeant who shot it told me that there were maggots the size of his pinkie finger crawling in a hole in the leopard's head. It is believed that hole was a porcupine quill wound that had gone septic!

With lions it is a different story, though, because they live mostly in groups, so, firstly it is easier to kill a porcupine in a group because, while the porcupine is protecting it's back by always keeping its tail pointed at the potential threat, another lion can move around to the unprotected front of the animal and kill it. Secondly, the lions can remove hard-to-get quills from each other. In fact, the staple diet of the lions of the Kalahari are porcupines!  

Another stunning shot from Dave De Vos from "The Croft's" (unit 19)! This time it is of an Olive Bushshrike, Chlorophoneus olivaceus, caught in a rare, exposed situation, because they normally keep to thick bush.

This bird has two colour morphs, the true olive morph in the south of its range, a mix in-between, and the buff morph in the north of its range, like here on the estate. In fact, they were regarded as two different species until genetic analysis proved them to be the same species!

They may be hard to see, because they love to keep themselves in the thickest of bush, but they are very vociferous during early spring during peak breeding time. They also make a variety of sounds, unlike other bushshrikes, which can be quite confusing. Many visitors to the estate have sworn that they heard a Bokmakierie, while it was the Olive Bushshrike instead. Also, sometimes its call sounds exactly like the lower pitched call of an Orange Bushshrike, but the Olive Bushshrike is the only member of this family represented here on the estate.

These birds are monogamous and when a male and a female join up, they establish a small territory in forest and riparian thickets and spend the rest of their lives there, except in the Soutpansberg and the eastern highlands in Zimbabwe where they become seasonal altitudinal migrants, meaning that they will move to a lower altitude in the cold of winter. Now, many of our supposedly sedentary birds do this here on the estate because of our altitude, but the Olive Bushshrike does not seem to do it here.

The pair do not forage together but will forage on their own by gleaning arthropods like spiders, mantids, grasshoppers, beetles, wasps and ants, from leaves and branches in the thickets of the forest. They also eat small quantities of fruit like our Forest Num-num fruits.

After mating, the pair build an untidy and flimsy cup-shaped nest at about three metres from the ground and line it with fine grass. The nest is well concealed and very difficult to locate. The female then lays one or two eggs in the cup, and they share incubation duties for just over two weeks before they hatch. The parents again share the feeding duties until the chicks are fledged after another fortnight. They are single-brooded, meaning that they only raise on pair of chicks per season.

Aargh! Ugly as sin! This is a Sucking Louse that I found, with many others, on a fresh warthog carcass. I have narrowed it down to the Haematopinus genus for certain, but I gather that it must be the species Haematopinus phacochoeri since that species of louse is specific to warthogs.

Lice are six-legged insects from the Psocodea order, but are often mistaken for ticks, which are arachnids, related to spiders, who have eight legs as an adult.

The body is heavily armoured, feeling like hard plastic, and the legs end in sharp, curved claws. These adaptions allow it to cling tenaciously to the poor warthog, even when the warthog scratches the spot with its sharp hooves. When I tried to remove it, it crouched down and clung on for all that it was worth, forcing me to use my knife to finally pry it loose.

The eggs of these lice are cemented onto the mane hairs of the warthog and cannot be removed without removing the strand of hair. The eggs hatch and a nymph emerges and immediately begins to suck the warthog's blood, moulting as it grows. So, the entire life cycle of the louse is spent on the same warthog!

This is a Thread-waisted Wasp that I featured in my blog of November 2019. This is what I wrote:

When you walk down the footpaths of the estate, along the rivers or not, there is often a slim wasp that flies from the path before you at ankle height and settles again further along the path. Then takes off again as you approach and moves further on and settles until you approach and the moves further on and.... This is it, Ammophila ferrugineipes from the Sphecidae family of Thread-waisted Wasps. 

The females of these solitary wasps dig a hole into the hard ground (of the pathway) and construct a small chamber at the end, only a few centimetres below the ground. Once complete, she memorises the location of the hole and goes off in search of caterpillars which she attacks and paralyses with her sting. She then returns to the hole with her victim, flying cumbersomely (not a real word but descriptive) if it is small enough or dragging it if it is too big, and pulls the still-living worm down into the chamber. 

The worm was about 10cm away from the hole when the photo was taken. After she has deposited a suitable number of worms into the chamber, she covers the hole up and expertly camouflages it by sprinkling sand on top. In this instance, she even picked up the stone in the foreground in the picture and placed it on top of the covered hole. Afterwards, she then leaves and has nothing further to do with her offspring. 

After incubation, the maggot hatches from the egg and proceeds to eat the worms who are still fresh because they are still alive! Once the great meal is complete and the maggot is at full size, it pupates and emerges as an adult, ready to repeat the process for her offspring after she has found a male and mated with him. 

The picture above is not the one that I published (I published a nicer one of the wasp alone), but it was taken at the same time. This just shows the caterpillar and the hole (at the tip of her abdomen) just before she dragged the caterpillar down the hole.

Now, this photo was taken only a week or two ago, almost exactly six years after the one above! When I encountered this wasp, she had obviously deposited the worm/s in the hole already, because I watched her cover it up, plugging it with a relatively large stone (still visible in the hole), and kicked loose soil over the scar and then deposited another huge stone on top of that. Completely hidden!

I'll end off with another photo taken by a camera trap. This is from the camera that is set up at K24 where I always get photos of interesting things!

These two young male Bushbuck are definitely friends. The camera took at least eighty photos of the two of them together over a period of about a week. They remained very close in almost all the photos while they were foraging, and on two occasions, while they were wrestling like the one above.

Bushbuck are not territorial and tolerate other males in their home range. They will only resort to fighting if there is a female ready to mate and there are two dominant males in the immediate area. In fact, the available literature actually says that they are the most tolerant of other males of all solitary antelope and that they never fight seriously.

I disagree with that just because, a few years ago, I saw two males tumbling down the steep slope at the entrance to the forest leading to Steenkamps' waterfalls with their horns interlocked. They only disengaged and retreated because of my presence. It was very violent!

Although they are so tolerant intraspecifically (within their own species), they are quite the opposite interspecifically! They dominate over much larger animals at waterholes during droughts and defend themselves violently when attacked. They are notorious for killing gundogs, dogs used to subdue wounded animals during hunts by humans. In fact, I once watched a big male bushbuck walk, unknowingly, right past a cheetah that was stalking an ewe bushbuck with her fawn. The cheetah pretended that the male bushbuck was not there and waited for him to have passed sufficiently far before it continued its hunt, which was successful.

These two, however, are sparring or wrestling like friendly little boys do, with no intention of harming each other.

Springtime is over and we will reach midsummer soon. The estate is looking lush and verdant for the festive season celebrations. See you there! Remember, if you want a guided walk, hike, drive while visiting Finsbury, just let me know and we will arrange a nice adventure.