December 2019

DECEMBER 2019

It was a jolly season to behold! The temperamental weather featured lots of lightning and dry thunderstorms but it let up enough for everyone to have a great time. It also finally, towards the end of the month, produced 132mm of rainfall which is not too much less than our 164mm average for the last decade. The estate is magnificently green and lush now, with many flowers blooming like the Scarlet River Lilies in the picture above, taken along the high altitude stream above Troutkloof waterfall on the new Zebra hiking trail. With all the outdoor activities happening on the estate over the month, much was seen, from leopard spotted by the Mackenzie's from Pebble Creek to a pair of Oribi spotted several times by the Stewarts and Greens from Jackpot Cottage. Below are some of the many goodies that I got to see over this last month of the decade:

I had to start with this Thread-waisted wasp that I spoke about in last month's blog. You will notice that the bright orange band around the first two segments of her abdomen, from the waist, has faded to almost black and she has a strange protrusion from between her third and fourth abdominal segments and another just before the last one. As mentioned before, wasps are mostly parasitic and their activities make good script for horror movies but it doesn't stop there. In this case the wasp has been stylopised, which means that she is a victim of a horrible parasite from the Stylopidae, a family of insects quite closely related to flies in the order Strepsiptera, The two protrusions from the abdomen of the wasp are either adult female stylopids who spend their entire adult lives protruding from the abdomen of their hosts, or male stylopid pupas, that once pupated, will emerge and fly off in search of a female. They do not kill the host but weaken it and make it sterile. When the female stylopid is receptive, she emits a scent pheromone that will hopefully be picked up by a male, which resembles a house fly slightly, but with branched antennae and clubbed forewings as opposed to a fly's clubbed hind wings. The male lives very briefly, less than six hours, so he may not dilly dally as he searches out these pheromones. Once he finds the female, he must mate with her through an opening on the anterior part extruding from the host, and then he will promptly die. Her young hatch within her, within the host, and eat their mother out from the inside!. These first instar larvae have legs and scramble out of her anterior section and run around in search of new hosts. Once a host is found, the larva attach themselves and secrete a compound that softens the host's cuticle so that the larva can burrow inside it's host's abdomen where they will feed and grow and then pupate, Once the pupal stage is complete, the male flies off and the female remains in her pupal shell for her entire life. 

  

While descending from Goudkoppies on the new Zebra Trail with a group of hikers, we came across this Red-banded Blister Beetle, Actenodia curtula, from the Meloidae. The bright red and black warning colouration and its slow-moving habits let us know that it is harmful or poisonous and the common name alerts us to the blisters that form on your skin if you fool around with one. The chemical that it contains and secretes through its leg joints when harassed is called Cantharadin, which in very small quantities is the major ingredient of "Spanish Fly", the age old aphrodisiac, but otherwise has been used by traditional apothecaries as a virulent poison for aeons. I remember once when a good friend of mine, while visiting me in the bush, squashed one under the fabric of his jeans. The blisters that formed were so big that we had to cut his jeans. I also remember that we accidentally burst a blister and new ones formed on his skin as the fluid ran over it! We landed up rushing him to the hospital.

This little round, flat-faced frog is called a Plaintive Rain Frog, Breviceps verrucosus, and it is a new species for my Finsbury list, next to the more common Mozambican Rain Frog. Male Rain frogs begin to call from the entrance to their subterranean nest when the humidity in the air increases. Like other frogs, the females respond and are attracted by the call. When she arrives at his nest, the male mounts the female by excreting a sticky fluid from his chest and pasting his little round body to the back of the much larger female and amplexus takes place. A dozen plus large eggs are laid in the nest and on top of that, she lays water-filled sterile eggs that help to keep the real eggs moist. The tadpoles hatch within a larger, water-filled egg and develop there instead of in a body of water like other frogs and they then hatch as froglings. The Afrikaans name for these frogs is "Blaas-op" which means to inflate. If one tries to pull one of these little frogs out of its hole, it will inflate its body so it looks like a little balloon and this makes it impossible to extract it from the nest.

I took this photo because I wanted one of a Click Beetle from the Elateridae. Click beetles are usually very drably coloured so I was excited to see one with aposmetic colouration, which is a bright colour pattern that advertises that the organism is harmful or poisonous. I unfortunately could not find out why this particular species is aposmetic but it must be because it contains some type of toxin. Because Click Beetles are so long and cylindrical, if they turn over, it is unlikely that they will be able to right themselves so they have a ridge on the edge of the thorax that comes into contact with the abdomen,and if they bend their bodies so that the abdomen catches the ridge and then suddenly let go, their bodies spring up into the air with a loud click and they land upright. But what is even more spectacular in the photo is the colours of the flower that the beetle is on. The flower is an Oxygonum dregeanum from the Polygonaceae and when viewed close up like this, the special colours can be appreciated: Powder blue anthers with a sprinkle of silver pollen, bright yellow stigmas set on shiny white petals with a soft blue tinge and pink underparts. Spectacular! 

Although I am crazy about birds, I don't usually mention them in my blogs because my camera is not designed for bird photography. But this little brown job allowed me to come so close that the photo came out. This is one of the three common little brown jobs that we get on the estate that look very similar. When hiking in the grasslands, particularly on rocky slopes, there is a ubiquitous plaintive whistle that can almost always be heard coming from this little bird. It is a Wailing Cisticola, Cisticola lais. The subspecies monticola (above) is the plainest of them all which makes it even more difficult to tell apart from the other common Cisticola in the estate, the Lazy Cisticola, C. aberrans, which prefers the rank bush along the rivers but also spends time on rocky slopes. The only way to tell these two cisticolas apart without hearing the sound is by the slight streaking on the back of the Wailing Cisticola (see above) as opposed to the Lazy Cisticola's plain back. The Lazy Cisticola also  likes to cock it's tail like that of a  Prinia. But then we get the Drakensberg Prinia, Prinia hypoxantha, that also enjoys a similar habitat! The easiest way to discern the Lazy Cisticola and the Drakensberg Prinia is the presence of streaking on the breast of the Prinia compared to the plain breast of the Cisticolas. Then there is a third species of Cisticola that occurs on short grasslands but it is relatively easy to distinguish from the others by the clicking sounds in the call and the wing-snapping when it flies. It is called a Wing-snapping Cisticola, C. ayresii. The Moores were with me when we identified this species and Nick (being British) loved the Afrikaans name which has a lovely ring to it: Kleinste Klop Kloppie.

This crazy, psychedelic bug is pretty horrifying as it sucks the juices from a worker termite. Some time ago I posted a bit on an Assasin bug that feeds exclusively on millipedes, well this one, from the Harpactorinae (not to be confused with the Harpactirinae subfamily of tarantula spiders featured in the last blog) subfamily of the Reduviidae family of bugs, is more catholic in its diet and sucks the juices from anything that it can subdue. The victim is a Nasute Harvester Termite and instead of jaws, it has an elongated, hypodermic "nose" through which it excretes a poisonous fluid as a defense against predators. In this case, you can see a drop of this fluid hanging at the end of its "nose" which has not stopped this predator! 

A very special flower, Zantedeschia albomaculata albomaculata, a Speckled Calla (see the speckled leaves in the background) was flowering this month. I have always pointed out a small colony residing on a ledge on the cliff above SPK12 to those who were interested and I have come across one or two other individuals on the estate over the years. This year, though, I saw at least five individuals flowering alongside the road in Steenkamp's Valley, particularly between Grilse Cottage and Rock Solid. Maybe it is the lack of rain? That's the only big difference between this season and the others since I have been here but it would be odd, since they usually grow in marshy situations...

Now this is quite a spectacular bloom, is it not? It is the flowering umbel of a Brunsvigia radulosa and it can't be missed because it stands up to a meter off the ground. I found this one while camping with the Moore's at the base of the summit of Mount Anderson after an afternoon shower. Like the previous flower, the Speckled Calla, I have seen two of these flowering in the Steenkamp's Valley, close to Bulldozer Creek, for the first time since I have been here.

A close up of the head and thorax of an Emperor Moth from the Saturniidae shows the feathery antennae of the male (the female has simple antennae). Lepidopteran (butterflies and moths) antennae are amazing appendages that are used for navigation in migratory butterflies; plant identification in those who require specific species for development of their young like the Monarch butterfly featured in the Jolly Season blog of 2018; flight stability and recovery in Hawk moths and others; and detection of females in most moths like the one above. The surface of the segmented antenna is covered in olfactory scales, pits or hairs that bind to free-floating molecules like pheromones, water vapour and scent particles. This male Emperor moth can detect a female, through her pheromones, from up to 2 kilometers away!

On my way to the Miner's Cottage recently, I saw a bachelor herd of Greater Kudu, Tragelaphus strepsiceras, on the grassy slopes above the road. Once they reach their fourth year, young Kudu bulls leave the natal herd and join up with a bunch of other bulls in the same predicament and form a bachelor herd, where they avoid the females and with them the aggressive attentions of large dominant, solitary bulls, and where they still enjoy the security benefits of being in a herd. They establish a dominance within this group and stay together for around two years until the lure of females becomes too much and they feel confident enough to go out there on their own and face the hazards of being a dominant male. In the Kruger Park, six year old, dominant Kudu bulls rarely survive past their seventh year due to predation. Being in a herd provides many eyes and ears to detect danger and when it happens, only one of the group will be killed, giving everybody a fair chance. Over here on the estate, a large male leopard is pretty much the only predator that will down a dominant, breeding bull. But a female leopard will still go for these young guns. 

A Spotted Bush Snake, Philothamnus semivariegatus, brought to me by James Mackenzie from Pebble Creek. I featured some of our green snakes in the October blog but did not mention this one because the spotting (which is very mild in this individual) makes it easier to identify. Unlike many snakes, the Spotted Bush Snake is not territorial and is known to travel relatively vast areas in search of food, which is almost exclusively roosting Geckos, although they will also take Chameleons and Tree Frogs. They are also very nervous snakes and are quick to disappear when disturbed. This nervousness also makes them unsuitable as pets as they very rarely feed in captivity, and even though snakes can live a long time without food, a captive snake will die soon enough.

The spectacular fresh bloom of the Common Sugarbush, Protea caffra, dusted all over the slopes of the estate, driving the sunbirds and sugarbirds crazy. As I have mentioned before, these pale flowers are atypical of this species, with the normal flower colour being a light red. In our area, though, this is the "normal" colour and I have , so far, only found two individuals with red flowers.

A big old Giant Dung Beetle, Heliocopris hamadryas. Of the 53 species that occur, 47 are found in Africa with the remainder in Asia. Generally, Dung Beetles are relatively easy to identify because they have flattened, spatulate forelegs and snouts, enabling them to easily mold a blob of fresh dung into a perfect ball. All species of Heliocopris specialise in Elephant and Rhinoceros dung and have mostly become locally extinct together with these pachyderms in unprotected areas. This is the only species that has been able to adjust to smaller herbivore dung like that of cattle and, in this case, Eland and perhaps White-tailed Gnu. This individual is also recognizable as a female because the males have large protrusions from their faces which lead to their common name of Rhino Beetle.

I left the best for last: A Drakensberg Crag Lizard, Pseudocordylus melanotus, that actually allowed Nick Moore and I to sneak within two meters of it! These lizards are around 400mm long including the tail with the females being less colourful and slightly bigger. They excavate scrapes beneath large boulders into which they retreat at the first sign of danger. Males advertise their dominance by occupying a large boulder and making themselves visible to potential rivals with the dark colouration mixed with bright orange a very effective camouflage, from above, on rocks covered by Fire-dot lichens. The gravid females are ovoviviparous, which means that their eggs hatch within their bodies and the young are born alive. 

Well that's it for the year. No, that's it for the decade! 2020 sounds like a sci-fi movie to me and makes me wonder where all the time has gone. We look forward to seeing you all many times this year in these beautiful mountains!