November 2019

NOVEMBER 2019

Still very dry! We only had 84mm rainfall on the estate for the month of November. And 90% of it fell in just two days. There has been a lot of threatening with clouds and distant thunder as you can see from the above photo of Mount Anderson taken from the west. But, the grass has sucked all that rain up and is thriving and getting greener every day. There has also been some very hot days where 32 degrees has been reached (the lowveld has been averaging in the mid forties!) and all the little creepy crawlies have come alive as you'll see after the next photo...

First though, the month got off to a splendid start when the Springboks won the world cup. The estate was pretty quiet that weekend with only 4 houses being used. The members and guests from three of them were more than enough to celebrate that magnificent victory in the office turned party house!Go Bokke!

Now from rugby to Cricket... In my previous blog I spoke about how some frogs' calls can be quite complex, well the chirping of crickets, like the Field Cricket from the Gryllidae above, have been studied in Europe far more intensely than frogs' calls. Crickets appear to also have quite a vocabulary, with difference chirps for aggression, male beckoning female and male courting female. Also, their chirp rates' frequency fluctuates with temperature fluctuations and this is so reliable that the relationship between chirp rate and temperature is known as Dolbear's Law. Applying this law to the common american cricket, the Snowy Tree Cricket, we would be able to work out the ambient temperature, in fahrenheit, by adding 40 to the number of times the cricket chirps within the time-span of 14 seconds! Even more bizarre: There is a species of parasitic  tachnid fly with auditory organs that is attracted to the chirp of the above cricket, Once it detects the cricket it lays an egg on it and the maggot hatches and proceeds to consume the cricket from within. Since this was discovered in 1975, entomologists have discovered a few species of cricket on some Hawaiian islands that, although endowed with auditory organs and sound production organs, have evolved the ability to find females using more menial methods and do not chirp at all, to avoid attracting the fly! 

In the last blog I showed you a fly mopping up the pollen on a Hypoxis rigidula with abnormally light, lemon-yellow petals. Well ,it seems these flowers are a food source for a whole array of animals. Here, we have two caterpillars munching away at the (normal coloured) petals like there was no tomorrow! The Hypoxis is also very useful to us humans: The plant was recently described as a "Wonder Herb" and corms of the plant are now sold over the counter in health shops. The corms contain a compound called Hypoxiside, which converts to rooperol when it enters the human gut. Rooperol is a biologically active compound that balances the immune system and preparations of this are being used, in primary health care, to boost the immune systems of patients with HIV/AIDS.

This striking beetle is called a Skunk Longhorn because it expels a foul smell when it is harassed. This, and the beetle in the following photograph both belong to the Cerambycidae family and are collectively known as Long-horned Borer Beetles. This common name refers, firstly to the characteristically long antennae, and secondly to the fact that the females of these beetles use their ovipositors to drill into either wood, stems or roots and lay their egg batches therein. The female of this species lays her large batches of eggs in the wood of dead or dying trees, When the larvae hatch, they are voracious cannibals that consume their siblings until the survivors are so far apart that they are no longer a threat to each other. This boost of protein starts them gnawing away at the wood on which they feed. They avoid encountering their surviving siblings' tunnels as they create their own tunnels with the aid of vibration sensing organs, called chordotonal organs, that run along the sides of their fat white bodies. As they grow bigger, so their tunnels become wider but because wood is such a nutrient poor food source, it takes a few years for the grub to reach full size. At full size, they tunnel as close to the surface as they can and pupate there. 

This Long-horned Borer Beetle is called a Pondo Pondo Longhorn, Ceroplesis thunbergii, and it has a similar life history as the previous species. Once the pupal stage is complete, the adult chews its way to the surface of the wood or bark with well developed jaws and uses these to feed on nectar, pollen, leaves or stems of herbaceous plants. If you pick up any species of Long-horned Borer Beetles, you can watch as it rubs the base of its thorax against the rough edge of the elytra and produce a rather feeble sound. Since beetles have no auditory organs and the sound is not particularly frightening, it is uncertain why they would have evolved this ability. No species has been observed using this ability to communicate with others of its species and if there is a link between the ability to produce sounds and the vibration sensing organs in the larvae, then it still has to be discovered.

Forest Num Nums, Carissa bispinosa. zambesiensis, are flowering now which makes it easy to distinguish them by the white blooms in the gloom  of the afro-temperate forests on the estate. The small, bright red berry of this little tree from the poisonous Mikweed family is edible and tasty to boot, even though it contains a milky latex. This tree grows easily from seed and the dark, glossy green leaves, scented jasmine-like flowers and attractive berries, make it an ideal shade-loving ornamental. They are also armed with stout two-pronged spines and if planted in a row a meter apart, they will create an almost impenetrable barrier hedge. 

A close up of a Bark Spider, Caerostris sp. These spiders span a stout line up to 2 meters apart between two anchors and hang there large orb web from there in the night time. When morning arrives the spider dismantles the web, leaving only the initial stout line behind, and then retreats to a nearby branch where it huddles down for the day, looking just like a piece of bark. Now, the literature says that the spider eats the silk of the web when dismantling it so as not to waste the protein, a fact I always found hard to swallow because the webs are enormous compared to the spider. Well, when my daughter visited me a year and a half ago from the US, we were enjoying a walk, with flashlights, around the perimeter of  Shingwedzi camp in the Kruger Park after 10pm.. It was very windy and we encountered a Bark Spider waiting to snag prey on its huge web. I told her the story of it eating the web. She was also skeptical and then as if on cue, perhaps the light and the wind together were too much but the spider promptly began eating its web at a great speed! In less than 2 minutes the entire web, except for the stout line, was gone! I wish we had thought to film it with our phones but we were too stunned to think about it! 

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. These solitary wasps dig a hole into the hard ground (of the pathway) and construct a small chamber at the end, only a few centimeters 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 and 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 amount of worms into the chamber, she covers the hole up and expertly camouflages it by sprinkling sand on top. She even picked up the stone in the foreground in the picture, and placed it on top of the covered hole. The wasp then leaves and has nothing further to do with its 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 afterwards. 

This large wasp resembles the previous Thread-waisted Wasp with it's narrow waist but it rather belongs to the social Paper Wasp family, Vespidae. In my June blog I spoke about the beautiful Umbrella Paper Wasp and how the Foundress constructs a nest and has helpers help her raise her young. Well, even though this much bigger wasps looks like the previous solitary wasp it is also a Paper Wasp but tends to be less afraid of human presence so their nests are frequently found under the eaves of houses. I'm sure all the members from the estate have encountered them at their houses here, particularly those from Otter's Rest because we have to remove a whole bunch of nests from there every year. These wasps, unlike the Thread-waisted Wasps, feed their young in the nest pretty much like birds do.

This delightful little furry flower goes by the name of Doll's Powder Puff, Cyanotis speciosa, and it only stands 4-5 centimeters off the ground. It can be found throughout the estate but particularly in shallow soils in rocky situations in medium to high altitude grasslands. The fact that it thrives in full sun, in shallow soils, it reproduces vegetatively as well as by seed and it can withstand drought and flood make it an ideal plant for a Green Roof. In a green roof situation it requires little maintenance as well. If you go to even higher altitudes you may find it's rarer close cousin C.lapidosa, (also excellent for a green roof) which has got beautiful mauve flowers.

This Common Slug-eater, Duberria lutrix, was very reluctant to come out of the debris that it had burrowed into after I disturbed it while clearing the area for my carport. The thick scales on its snout enable it to burrow into surprisingly hard surfaces. This being this harmless snake's only defense except to roll up into a neat ball with its head inside the roll. As its common name suggests, the snake feeds exclusively on slugs and snails who are easily tracked down by the slimy trails they leave behind. it swallows slugs whole while it expertly de-shells snails by forcing the snail body into its mouth while pushing its snout between the snail and its shell. Those who have raised and fed these snakes say that it is very comical to watch the snake's mouth bubble after eating snails.

A small herd of Cape Buffaloes escaped from the Origstad Nature Reserve earlier in the month and I eagerly assisted by checking south and west of the reserve, in the Haartebees Vlakte, for any signs of them. I didn't find any buffalo but I did find a rocky "rainforest", like on the escarpment near the town of Graskop. In this mystical forest, besides the biggest Yellowwood that I have seen in the area, I found a Bottlebrush tree. I have always had such difficulty telling the two species we get here, the Transvaal Bottlebrush (Greyia sutherlandii) and the Woolly Bottlebrush (G.radlkoferi), apart, with the flower of the former being more cylindrical and the flower of the latter being more round. And the leaves of the former being glabrous and the leaves of the latter being hairy, with different individuals have hairier and smoother leaves etcetera etcetera. Coincidently, on the Plant Specialist Group outing I attended last month, I mentioned this difficulty to John Burrows, a well known botanist. He told me that the leaves of the Transvaal one are sticky at the bottom and shiny smooth, I won't get it wrong when I see it, he said. Well, he was right, of course. This one had the clearly cylindrical flowers of the Transvaal Bottlebrush and the leaves were sticky at the bottom and shiny (see insert). This puts my doubts to rest and I can now confidently say that I have NOT yet encountered a specimen of Transvaal Bottlebrush on the estate, only its close cousin, the Woolly Bottlebrush, Greyia radlkoferi. The other one can and should occur here and I will be more alert from now that I finally know the difference.

A Van Son's Thick-toed Gekko hatchling, Pachydactylus vansonii, found right up on the Goudkoppies plains. This 45mm long individual must have recently hatched, together with its single sibling, in the vicinity (The mother lays only 2 hard-shelled eggs). The adult is also boldly marked but with a very different pattern. Strange, though, because everywhere I have looked mentions that this is a lowveld gekko, not found in temperate areas except when transported there by humans (accidentally or not) and associated with houses. There's certainly no houses close to the Goudkoppies plains and it gets really cold up there but clearly they exist there and are breeding there. 

Wow, this moth looks a lot like a butterfly, especially an African Monarch like its name Monarch Looper (Cartaletis libyssa) would suggest. The second part of its common name, Looper, refers to the caterpillar who has less pairs of legs than your average caterpillar, leaving it with legs at the front of its body and at the back of its body. So when it moves, it reaches out and grabs the substrate with its front legs then lifts its back legs and the rest of its body up and brings it forward to the front legs. Then it lets go with the front legs and reaches out for its next foothold further along the substrate and repeats the process, giving it a looping gait. We commonly call them Inchworms which I think is more correct because all worms that do this belong to the Geometridae family of moths, which means: To measure the earth.

A spectacular Stemmed Clivia, Clivia caulescens. I know of a few members who love this plant but seldom get a chance to get here in November when they are flowering to see colonies of them in the forested gorges. This year they were out in force and the deeper part of the Upper Majubane was festooned with them. I had planned to go with Malcolm, the manager of MTPA's Emoyeni, to Clivia gorge beyond the Steenkamp's waterfalls this month but it was cancelled at the last moment. This gorge is apparently crowded with these plants so it must be quite a eye full during the flowering time. Perhaps next year.

I finally have got to see a Baboon Spider specimen on the estate. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find which species it is but it belongs in the subfamily Harpactrinae (Southern Baboon Spiders) in the Tarantula family. I have always known that they occur here because their burrows are easily recognisable but they are not easily coaxed out of it like their lowveld counterparts. Unlike most spiders, these are active hunters who do not rely on silk to catch their prey but instead actively hunt and ambush their prey in the night. The only time they use silk is to line their burrows and some species cover the entrance to their burrow to waterproof it. this individual was taking advantage of the lights around the office at night while it hunted the insects attracted by them, 

Finally, a rather depressing photograph of the larger of the Steenkamp's waterfalls taken a fortnight ago. It is reduced to almost a trickle as we enter mid summer with barely any rainfall. We had two heavy rainfalls in the latter part of the month but it fell so quickly and violently that all it did was cause a mini-flood and the water levels only rose for a few days, then dropped back down again. There is hope, though, because as I write this we have enjoyed 60mm of rain in 2 days (recorded as December rainfall) and it has been perfect rainfall: soft and continuous, allowing full absorption. Suddenly everything is looking greener, much greener than when I started this blog.

That's all for November. It is already time for the Silly Season again so we are preparing for a busy estate. Some very exciting news: Don has veiwed a small troop of Samango Monkeys in the Steenkamp's gorge. They have obviously migrated over the watershed from the Sabie valley side and it's great to have them here. let's hope they stay and become residents. I have gone searching but have so far come out empty handed. They are quiet, shy and retiring unlike their cousins so are difficult to spot. Keep a look out and try to snap a photo for me if you spot them to put into my files. 

See you soon!

October 2019

OCTOBER 2019

October, the month when rains traditionally arrive, has been hot and dry. All the plants are rearing to grow but the clouds remain light and rain still seems far away with the water levels dropping to all time lows. The above picture shows the thirsty grasslands surrounding Mount Anderson as seen from the south west, from Emoyeni above Bulldozer Creek. It may have been dry, but I got to see a whole bunch of interesting goodies while working this month:

Poised to spring away or defend itself with the sharp spines attached to extremely powerful hind legs, a Garden Locust, Acanthracis ruficornis, watches me as I approach it. Although it is called a locust, that word that rightfully conjures up images of massive swarms, only about a dozen of the 10 000 odd species of locusts or grasshoppers in the family Acriddidae actually swarm like that. There are two species, one a sub-species of the swarms of biblical times, and another, the Brown Locust that looks very much like the one above, that swarm in South Africa but only do so after a few seasons of continuous high rainfall. There's even a Red Locust response team with a dedicated helicopter based in Pretoria. We should rather be putting all these resources into harvesting the locusts when they swarm because the locusts themselves are a better source of protein than the crops they destroy! anyway, I digress, this is a solitary species and, after mating, the female drills a hole into the ground with the tip of her abdomen, lays a batch of 30 - 50 eggs and then covers them with a foamy liquid that hardens and protects them. She covers the egg sack up and, if it is late in summer, the eggs will over-winter and only hatch when it warms up and the rains arrive the following season. Otherwise they will hatch in about a fortnight and tiny little hoppers will emerge and begin to devour the grasses around them. These will continue to grow and molt until the sixth and final instar when it's wings are fully grown and functional.

Is it a bee? Nope. It is  a fly that mimics a bee, which offers a certain amount of protection. The quickest way to tell them apart is the very obvious single pair of wings in the flies as apposed to a double pair of wings in all other flying insects. These Hover Flies from the Syrphidae family are not attracted to the flowers for the nectar, instead they are there to mop up the pollen grains and, although they eat the pollen, some grains still adhere to them and they still pollinate other individual flowers as they get to them. Like Ladybird beetles, these flies also lay their eggs on plants that are infested by aphids, and the slow-moving, slug-like larvae hatch and eat these plant pests by the hundreds, so, over-all, the Syrphid fly is a gardener's friend. This individual has chosen the little yellow flower of a Three-leaved Clover, Oxalis corniculata, as its meal.

This Common River Frog, Amietia quecketti, was resting on a half submerged rock in a small plunge pool in the high altitude grasslands near Goudkoppies and s/he let me get really close. I type "s/he" because it is not possible to tell the sex by simply looking at a frog. Once a frog has been caught and is in-hand, the best way to tell the sexes apart is to look at the underside of their chin and, if there is a gular sack visible, then it is a male. A gular sack is the loose skin that expands into a massive bubble/bubbles when the frog is croaking. So then, the males are the ones that croak, and the females are the ones that are attracted by the croaking. The croaks are usually rhythmic and repetitive except for with a very limited amount of species. The only two species that I have noticed that don't have a rhythmic, repetitive croak are the Foam Nest Frog from the Lowveld and this one, the Common River frog. Their calls are soft and contain many elements like croaks, chirrs and squeaks all jumbled together. Although male frogs are the ones that do the croaking, both sexes are able to emit distress calls and a release call. The distress call is a scream that is emitted when the frog is being attacked by a predator. The release call is a soft squeak that is emitted by an individual when a male frog attaches himself to the wrong sex or species in moments of amorous mayhem in crowded areas. Both the above calls are emitted by all frog species but they have to open their mouths do do it, unlike when males croak. After a bit of digging, I found that the Common River Frog has 7 distinct call note types that range from advertisement calls aimed at females, to calls resembling a roll call aimed at established neighbouring males (used to weed out imposters), to calls aimed at both sexes giving particulars about ones size and fitness, and then a few recognition calls. So when you listen to the sweet cadence of the River Frog, know that they are having quite an in-depth conversation.
  

The leaves and drying flowers of a Forest Silver Oak, Brachylaena transvaalensis, a large forest tree that has somehow gone unnoticed by me for many years until the copious flowers caught my attention this month. What a grand tree! With a beautiful, thick and shapely trunk and hard, slightly wavy leaves, glossy green above and white and felty below. The flowers are produced in large axillary and terminal panicles and are made up of ray florets typical of the Daisy family. The strong, fine-grained wood was extensively used for implement handles and fence poles and aqueous extracts have been found to have anti-bacterial properties. Large forest trees are difficult to learn because everything but the trunk is out of reach. I was lucky to find this one beside a steep slope so I could reach the leaves and flowers to identify it. 

A very busy butterfly that is extremely difficult to approach, a Pirate, Caterocroptera cloanthe, is on the wing during October and can often be seen fluttering to and fro over the paths near the weirs, sometimes aggressively approaching people too. They fly fast and low and males spend most their time defending their small territories, otherwise you can find them sucking the sap from a wounded tree, or the juices from a rotten carcass or, better yet, courting a female. The bright flash you saw could well be this.

Isn't that just stunning, the flower tubes of the Ifafa Lily, Cyrtanthus stenanthus, on the vast, dry high altitude plains of Goudkoppies. This small, but common Amaryllis is easily overlooked in the grasslands because of it's size. The scientific name means "curved flower, narrow flower".

This drab, elongated moth is also easily overlooked, even if you're looking for it. This is because of its habit of holding its camouflaged, elongated body parallel with the  grass stalks and folding its antennae backwards. They are looked for, you know. In some European countries, like Germany, the are used, together with certain butterfly species, to test the potential toxicity of newly developed GMO crops. Here, being in the grasslands, they are one of the most abundant of our moth species and occur in a bunch of colour variations (all earthy) but all have the same body and wing shape. They lay their eggs on the base of a grass plant and the larvae, after hatching, burrow into the ground and feed on roots.

Although I have seen the notorious Rinkhals, Hemachatus haemachatus, twice in the time I have been here, both sightings were so brief that I could not even get a photograph before they disappeared. The Mackenzies from Pebble Creek have shown me a great video of an encounter they had and photos of a more recent encounter too, but alas, I still do not have a photo for my files. But the other day, up on the Goudkoppies plains, I came across this perfectly preserved sloughed snake skin that I immediately identified as belonging to a large male Rhinkals. Immediately as their skins are certainly the easiest to identify because the scales on the underside and of the head are smooth (like any shiny snake) and the dorsal scales are keeled (like adders that are not shiny), check the insert. Other snakes are mostly either one or the other. I could tell it belonged to a large male because the skin measured 120 plus centimeters long, which is maximum size for a rhinkals, and the tail was over 20 centimeters long, so I would not be able to fit 6 tail lengths into the snakes full length. Females have shorter tails so I would have been able to fit more that 6 of them to the full body length (general rule for sexing snakes). Although the rhinkals resembles the cobra, it is even further from a cobra than a Black Mamba is. The most notable difference between a rhinkals and a cobra are the keeled scales, as mentioned above; the fact that rhinkals' have no solid teeth whereas cobras do; and the fact that a cobra is viviparous, meaning it lays eggs, while a rhinkals is ovoviviparous, meaning that the eggs hatch just prior to birthing, within the mother's body, so that live young are born. Well, that was almost as good, for me, as seeing a living specimen but still, one day... 

I was attracted to this Hypoxis rigidula by the light lemon yellow colour of its petals, as apposed to the dark, richer yellow normally present in these beautiful flowers. While checking it out a common fly, Musca sp., settled on the petals and started mopping up the pollen grains from on and around the filaments, just like I noticed with the Hover Fly above. Makes an interesting photo, though.  

A handsome big male Grey Rhebuck, Pelea capreolus, triggered the camera trap on Loop road just before I went to collect the card and replace the batteries on the last day of the month. These common buck are endemic to South Africa and only occur in regions with large mountains.They live in a harem system where a dominant male establishes a territory, that he maintains by means of scent markings and vocalisations, in which he allows only his ewes and their offspring. He alone mates with his ewes from February to April and they give birth to a single lamb after a gestation of 8,5 months around the end of the year. They co-exist with the similar sized Mountain Reedbuck on the Estate but do not compete because they are browsers (eat woody plants) while the reedbuck are grazers (eat grass). Bizarrely, though, they have been known to kill reedbuck with those sharp horns of theirs, on occasion. 

This is a picture taken at the same place at the end of August of a handsome big male Mountain Reedbuck, Redunca fulvorufula, easily confused with the previous species, mainly because they are similar size, shape and colour and the fact that they congregate in similar herd compositions. The males are easy to distinguish because the reedbuck (above) have curved horns while the rhebuck (previous species) have sharp, straight horns. The females are more difficult to distinguish apart because they do not have horns. The easiest way to tell them apart is when they run away, which is inevitable once they know they have been spotted: The Grey Rhebuck (previous species) always holds out a bright, white pom-pom tail when it is running, whereas the Mountain Reedbuck (above) only unfurls its broad, flat white tail momentarily, as it begins to run away, then quickly folding it back again as it runs off. The Mountain Reedbuck does not have a particular breeding season like the rhebuck, and the reedbuck is a grazer of grass, with a specialised digestive system so that it can handle even the lowest grade grasses in the dry season. Both species are common on the Estate but one normally has to hike up into the grasslands to find them.

The housekeeper at Coch-Y-bunddhu (unit 1), Maggie Mashabane called me on the radio in distress because there was a large green snake in the laundry room. I responded and this is what I found behind the washing machine. It is a Western Natal Green Snake, Philothamnus natalensis occidentalis, and it was angry, with its throat puffed out in the photograph because I had just hauled it out of the laundry room. It did actually bite the index finger tip that was holding the camera and nearly made me drop the thing! Fortunately they are not venomous. The advantage about catching it is that I got photographs of all parts of its body that I thought I would need to identify it because there are 3 species of green snake on the estate that are difficult to tell apart. Well, as you can see from the long scientific name, I got this one right down to subspecies level because of the following:
This individual had keeled (remember from the rhinkals?) belly scales up to but not onto the tail like the natalensis subspecies, while the Green Water Snake has smooth belly scales. The keeled belly scales (inverted compared to rhinkals and adders) help it to find purchase while climbing, which they do more than the water snake; this individual had only a single temporal scale where the ear would be while the Eastern Natal Green Snake (natalensis subspecies), which also occurs here, has two. All species are associated with water and the main prey item is frogs and toads although anything of suitable size will be captured.

Some workers were clearing the thickets between the office and my house when they exposed a rabbit's nest. The nest contained two little rabbit kittens with their eyes still closed. There has always been some confusion as to which species occurs here, with some saying we had the Jameson's Red Rock Rabbit and others saying we had the Natal red rock Rabbit. Well, it seems like the taxon has been revised and what we get here is the Hewitt's Red Rock Hare, Pronolagus saundersiae. So the common name is named after Hewitt, the guy that described this as a subspecies of another species in 1961, and the specific name is named after the person, Saunders, who collected the skulls that Hewitt used, all very confusing! Anyway, when these little bunnies grow up they will become one of the solitary, night active grass grazers that we encounter on the roads in our headlamps. The story has a happy ending, I think, because the kittens had disappeared by the following day which means that Mom probably moved them to a new nest. 

These tiny yellow worker ants scramble to move the pupae of workers and soldiers to safety after I lifted the rock they were living under. I have been clearing rocks off the new hiking trail that I am cutting up on Goudkoppies and this disruption exposes many little creepy-crawlies, unfortunately for them. The ants in the picture only measure 2 mm in length and they are the workers of the Yellow Fire Ant, Solenopsis punctaticeps, in the Myrmecinae sub-family. They have powerful stingers and these, together with their multitudes in numbers helps them to subdue prey items much larger than themselves. In fact, the venom contained in their stingers is called  solenopsin and it is composed of alkaloids derived from  Piperidine which can cause an allergic reaction in some people, resulting in anaphalaxis, resulting, if untreated, in death! Beware the FIRE ANT! 

Another victim of my rock lifting activities was this recently sloughed Highveld Lesser Thick-tail Scorpion, Uroplectes triangulifer. This tiny little scorpion is the second species of Uroplectes I have found on the Estate. This individual's skin is still shiny and tender after it has climbed out of its previous skin that had become a bit too tight fitting for comfort. The pair of comb-like appendages (visible on the upside-down skin) are called pectines, and they are sensory organs that pick up minute vibrations in the substrate. When two scorpions come together they communicate via vibrations which are picked up by the others pectines etc. When a mating pair meet and they are satisfied with each other after communicating as above, then the male will clasp the female and begin to shuffle her around while he searches for a suitable place to deposit his spermataphore. Once this is completed, he drags her over it and she absorbs it. They release and go their separate ways and after a minimum of 3 months the female gives birth to 8 to 10 tiny scorplings that attach themselves to her back until they have molted for the first time.   

The daintiest marsh-dwelling plant around. A Utricularia arenaria that I found in the small marshes up close to Troutkloof waterfall. In February this year I posted about a strange little marsh dweller that I struggled so to get into my files. Well, this is another member of that fascinating family, Lentibulariaceae, whose members use modified, underground leaves to sift through marshy waters and extract bacterians and protozoans  as food, essentially making them carnivorous plants. The little flower, with the spur, only measures 5mm long.

As I write this there is a gathering of clouds and I hope it is a omen of what is to come. Rain, rain, please come and visit... You also need to come and visit. Enjoy the mountains and the fresh air.

September 2019

SEPTEMBER 2019

September, spring month, has come and gone. Like last September, I was hoping to get some spring rains but, alas, it was not to be. We had a few cold fronts come through but they were not moist enough to bring rain although those in the latter part of the month were very cold (down to 4 degrees centigrade!) due to snowfall further south on the Drakensberg range. The photo above was taken facing north from the Miner's Cottage during one of those cold fronts and, as you can see, it is very dry and everything that grows is waiting in anticipation for the first rains. I've had more than one of Finsbury's old timers tell me that they have never seen the river levels quite so low as they currently are, although the fishing has still been pretty good.

Anyway, even though I was away for almost half of the month, I still managed to see and experience a whole bunch of interesting wildlife. Below is a gallery of some of it:

One of the very first trees to flower in the springtime is also one of the most common trees on the Estate, the Ouhout (Oldwood), Leucosidea sericea from the Rose family. Although the Rose family is a large one, it is not well represented in Southern Africa with this species, the African Almond, Prunus africana, three species of Rice Bush, Cliffortia spp and a few indigenous Brambles, Rubus spp the only indigenous representatives on the Estate. We do, though, have at least ten species of exotic Rosids present on the Estate, some harmful and being removed and some naturalised. Two notable naturalised exotics are flowering now, the beautiful pink blossoms of the Peach, Prunus persica, dotted all over the riparian areas of the Estate, and the lovely white blossoms of the Apple tree, Malus pulima, found at the parking spot for M3 near Morrin Pools (Unit 14). The Ouhout is an encroaching species, which means that, although it is indigenous, it will dominate areas that have been disturbed in the past, in our case through mining or alien plant removal. In pristine mesic grasslands they still occur but in much smaller numbers. In these areas they have historically been used as an indicator species: the spots along the mountain streams in which they occur are optimum habitat for the release of Rainbow Trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss!    

I have been rather lucky with my spider sightings in the last year or so with the discovery of a new species almost every month. This is a common and widespread species, the Wolf Spider, Lycosa sp, and although it is strictly only active during the night, it is easy to find by it's brightly reflecting eyes in torch light. These spiders are hunters and do not use silk and web to catch their prey but instead roam the countryside in search of arthropod prey on which they pounce and subdue with their venom. They are easy to identify because they have three rows of eyes: a lower row of four smaller eyes, above that a row of two large eyes and above that, another row of two large eyes. Another identification aid is the fact that the female carries her egg sack with her while she is out hunting. When the spiderlings hatch, they remain on their mother's back until at least after their first moult, very much like scorpions do.

Sticking to arachnids, this is a photo of a Red Spider Mite of the Tetranychidae in the subclass Acari (Ticks and Mites). The picture is of poor quality because the mite has had to have been magnified many times just to get a look at it. With it's legs outstretched it still does not reach two thirds of a millimeter! Although so tiny, this mite is an enormous pest on plants as is sucks the contents of individual plant cells dry, mainly because of its breeding habits where a female, sexually mature at only five days old, lays up to twenty eggs per day for her lifespan of about a month. They are also very difficult to find on plants because of their small size and the fact that they reside on the underside of the plant's leaves. One giveaway is the presence of silk on the plant that is spun by the mite to protect itself from predators and the elements.

This is an underwater shot of two different species of Mayfly nymphs in a fast flowing stream originating from Goudkoppies. They are easily identifiable due to the three hair-like filaments protruding from the rear of the abdomen and the seven pairs of gills sticking out the sides of the abdomen. They belong to one of the most primitive insect orders, the Ephemeroptera which means "winged for but a day". The nymphs (above) may take up to two years to mature but once the adult emerges from the water it will only live from a few hours to a few days, depending on the species, with its only function to find a suitable mate. Even though these insects are small and unnoticeable, they should be well known to the Finsbury folk as they are the primary insect imitated by artificial flies used by fly fishermen. The nymph is imitated with wet flies and the adult is imitated with dry flies

The beautiful but tiny little flowers of the Clumpy Strawflower, Helichrysum caespititium, which grow in the form of little mats lying flat on the ground in shallow soils. They occur all around the office area on the Estate, particularly around the helipad and the rain gauge, and also atop the highest peaks where the soil is shallow and rocky. This little plant was found to be useful in medicine as a anti-microbial agent at the turn of the century when a new phloroglucinol was isolated from the species. A phloroglucinol is an organic compound that is used in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and explosives. This was an important discovery since the cytotoxicity of contemporary antimicrobial drugs was a huge problem, and H. caespititium offered a solution. If you google the genus you will find endless information of the traditional and scientific uses of the plants. The genus consists of almost 250 species in Southern Africa, with the majority in the Fynbos biome and 19 species, so far, here on the Estate, with at least ten more to identify. Many species are particularly suitable for dry flower arrangements and are commonly known as Everlastings, Paper Flowers or Strawflowers. 

I visited Mike and Angela from Lone Tree Cottage (Unit 3) one evening to glean as much information as I could on the grasses found on the Estate, Angela's specialty. Besides having a ball, I also encountered some of their local fauna. This one is a Silver-striped Hawk Moth, Hippotion celerio, from the Sphingidae. Hawk moths are rather special lepidopterans from their sleek beauty to their speed to their pollinating specialities. They are among the fastest of insects with flying speeds up to 18 km/h and they are one of only four nectar feeders that evolved the ability to hover before a flower. The others are Hummingbirds, some bats and Hoverflies. Also, rolled up beneath their chins, they have a long probiscid (the Hummingbird Hawk moth's is almost 30 cm long!) used to suck nectar from flowers. In the early evening when a Hawk moth is preparing to forage, it will begin vibrating it's wings to warm up it's muscles. Then it will fly out into the evening and locate flowers mainly by scent. About 30% of Southern Africa's Orchids rely on moths to pollinate them. Orchids are specialists in securing very specific pollinators through their intricate flower design. Many orchids have very long spurs protruding from the back of the flower with nectaries right at the end of the spur. Only Hawk moth species with probiscids long enough will normally be able to reach this energy rich food source and so complete pollination more acurately as soon as it flies to the next flower, which will most often be of the same species. Clever, huh?

This was another one the fauna we encountered at Lone Tree Cottage that night. It is a Wahlberg's Velvet Gecko and it featured in my blog in March this year. That one I stumbled upon outdoors at Kingfisher Lodge (Unit 6) and this one is almost always indoors. Look at the colour difference, this one is much paler! Besides being spectacularly beautiful, this chap certainly is the biggest danger to that Hawk moth that I photographed just prior to this. His strategy is to lie in wait near the artificial light and ambush insects attracted to the light, which are mostly moths!

Another insect that is frequently attracted to artificial light is the Red Driver Ant, Dorylus helvolus. The one pictured above is the male who flies about at night in search of the scent of a colony. He looks more like a wasp than an ant and if you pick one up, it bends it's abdomen towards your fingers as if it is going to sting you. But never fear, there is no stinger! The colony, however, is filled with females only and they look like normal ants with big jaws...and stingers! The colonies normally consist of a couple of hundred thousand minor and major workers and soldiers but they can become huge, especially in central and east Africa, where they can consist of up to 50 million individuals! In places where the colonies become so big there will be certain times in the year when there is simply not enough food for them so they become nomadic and move through the bush in huge columns overpowering and consuming everything in their path. Even small vertebrates and immobilised large ones too. The first and only time I ever saw a marauding colony was a few weeks ago in the coastal forests of Kosi Bay, northern Kwa-Zulu Natal. Some Masaai in Kenya even guide these marauding colonies through their villages where they devour all pests from cockroaches to rats! The east Africans even use the soldiers' jaws as emergency sutures on open wounds: they hold the wound together, pick up an ant and force her to bite on each side of the wound, then break her body off. This is repeated along the length of the wound and the jaws remain attached and seal the wound like sutures. Anyway, once the male finds a colony he lands among them where they immediately rip his wings off and carry him back to a queen in the nest. 

What a great shot of a Brown Hyaena, Hyaena brunnea, taken by the new camera trap up on the junction of Loop road and the Cycle path, and at 08h00 in the morning! Although associated with more arid areas, this scavenging carnivore can survive in a wide variety of habitats. Although they scavenge alone mostly, they live in extended families where the previous offspring stay with Mom for a few generations, helping to raise the next offspring and the next. Males are more prone to leave the clan and the bigger and more successful of them roam around huge areas as rogues. The females in the clan do not mate with clan males, since they are all related, they only mate with these rogue males who are welcomed by all clan members during female oestrus cycles. Unlike their larger spotted cousins, Brown Hyaena do very little hunting of their own and if they do, it is for small mammals and other vertebrates, otherwise they are strict scavengers.

Another carnivore caught on the same camera trap last month, a Serval, Leptailurus serval. The grasslands of the Estate are optimal habitat for this solitary hunter of rodents. Upon hearing a rodent busy in the grass, usually from four or more meters away, the Serval will stand dead still until it pin-points the rodents position with those huge ears. Once it is sure of its prey's position, the spotted cat will launch itself into the air, up to two meters up and as far as four meters, and land directly on top of it's victim!

But what made these camera trap sightings so special is the time/date stamp. This Rooikat, Caracal caracal, appeared on the scene, in the same place, less than one and a half hours after the Serval, also sniffing around. Much more powerfully built than the Serval, the Caracal prefers a more wooded habitat than our grasslands and subsequently is much rarer than the Serval here on the Estate. The Caracal targets much larger prey items too, up to the size of a Common Duiker, which it can hoist into a tree just like a Leopard. So that's three special carnivores photographed by the camera trap up on Loop road in less than three weeks. Groovy!

Graeme Naylor from Cochy-Bondhu (Unit 1), a lover of orchids and all else natural, showed me an epiphyte orchid growing on the trunks of forest trees close to the Majubane waterfall. I told him I would keep an eye on them and photograph the flowers when they bloom. Well, Graeme, is it not beautiful? It is a Polystachya ottoniana orchid and all the other flowers were still just buds while this one had just opened by the last day of the month.

That's it for this month. Let us hope that October is the month that we get decent rainfall so that the water levels can increase and all this life that is on hold, will burst forth. We look forward to your visit...