Finsbury Autumn wildlife

GRASSLAND WILDLIFE IN AUTUMN

I'm sure for many of you that this may be the longest April ever experienced! Even being locked up together with those you love can be taxing after almost a month, so I thought I would showcase some of the wildlife that I have encountered in the last while here at Finsbury Estate in the mountains of Mpumalanga, to take your mind off ...… well, the mundane …… and murder?

These are the winged reproductives being released by workers of a colony of Pugnacious ants, Anaplolepis custodiens. The males emerge first and use their good vision to locate a landmark in the area, like a big tree. Other colonies in the area are synchronised and also release their winged alates at the same time, whose males often congregate at the same landmark where they all start releasing pheromones to attract winged females (opposite to termites, see March 2019 blog). In some ant species, the male plugs the female to avoid her mating with others but in most species, the female mates with up to 10 males whose sperm she stores and uses later to fertilise eggs. Once mated, the females dig into the ground and lay eggs to produce worker ants that will help her establish a new colony. Queens can live up to 30 years and workers between 1 and 3 years. In an established colony eggs are laid by the queen and immediately carried by workers to one of many nursery chambers where they are guarded.  The development of the eggs and larvae is temperature dependent so these care-givers constantly move them around the nest to where the temperature is suitable. Fertilised eggs hatch into diploid (double chromosomes) female workers and unfertilised eggs hatch into haploid (single chromosome) male drones. Once hatched, the larvae are fed by care-givers via trophollaxis, which is regurgitated food. In their final instars, the larvae are fed solids like seeds, pieces of insect and trophic eggs which are eggs laid as a food source, not intended to hatch into offspring.The larvae then enter the pupal stage and finally hatch into either workers or male drones. Male drones fly to other colonies and allow the workers to attack them. When they do, the male releases a pheromone that calms the attackers and then they pick up the male and carry him to their queen so they can mate. On hatching, workers spend the first few days tending to the queen and offspring. Then they spend the next while concentrating on nest work like cleaning and digging. Finally, when they are older and more expendable, they will join the ranks of workers that forage for food and defend the colony. Most ants that live in large colonies, like these Pugnacious ants, have workers forming different castes from small workers to medium workers to large workers that are often referred to as soldiers because of their size, although they still perform the work of the other workers. Above is actually just a brief summary of a very complex social system in ants called eusocialism. Eusocialism is where all individuals within a colony work together by giving more than taking, to form a collective body that behaves like a more complex individual of higher animals. Eusociality occurs in most hymenopterans and also in the much more primitive termites. In fact, if us humans could behave completely eusocially, this planet could support double our population with little damage to the environment. But our species, like all other animals except eusocial ones, take as much as they can and give as little in return as possible.    

Up close and personal with a Yellow-spot Fruit Chafer, Anisorrhina flavomaculata, as it makes its way across the vast plains that is my lawn. I had this urge to remind him that he can actually fly. There certainly wasn't any food around since they eat pollen, nectar, petals and other flower parts and, as their name suggests, fruit. Then it occurred to me that it was probably a female looking to lay her eggs under the ground. The larvae, once hatched, are fat white grubs, called "Chicken worms" in my youth, that eat detritus under the ground surface, or in this case, under the layer of grass..

I know I feature bagworms in my blogs quite regularly. I can't help it, it's such a clever system. This caterpillar has grown so much that it had to extend its case, which one can see by the fresher grass stalks closer to its head. It is feeding on the florets on the disc of a Porcupine Daisy, Berkheya echinacea, a striking daisy whose stems and leaves are covered in spiny thistles, hence its specific name (Echinos meaning Sea Urchin, the venomous creature with sharp spines. Echidnas are Spiny Ant-eaters, and as mentioned in my blog featuring mammals earlier this month, are also on of the few extant Monotremes). The worm has even got a cosy fur collar. Check out my blogs of March 2018 and February 2020 for more on Bagworms.

Ah! A new butterfly for my list and this one was gracious enough to pose with it's wings both open and folded. They were rather common last month till the middle of this month and now not noticeable again. The larvae feed on plants from the Euphorbia family which are quite hard to find with most species not occurring here. I have not yet located the one or two species from the Tragia genus and one Dalechampia vine, that the larvae of these butterflies eat, on the estate yet but they are surely here.

A male Mountain Malachite, Chlorolestes fasciatus, perched beside M28. The males are easy to distinguish because most of them, up to 70%, have banding on the wings. On unbanded individuals, one would have to check the end of the abdomen to verify the sex. If it has claspers, those appendages that hold the female during mating, then it is a male. I remember over a decade ago reading about the way they discovered that lionesses actually were more attracted to male lions with black manes as opposed to males with blonde mains. Well, I never thought that would be the case with insects. Female Mountain Malachites are more attracted to males with banding on their wings than males with plain transparent wings! And even though males with banding have a higher predation rate because they are more visible to their predators, they are responsible for most of the breeding. They are also doubly aggressive toward unbanded males which was something that I got to experience when I took this photo. There were plenty of them around and I guessed that they were all males because the unbanded ones were constantly chased off by more than a few banded ones. All in the small area beside M28 between Jackpot Cottage and Rainbow Rivers.

This poor fellow is an unbanded Mountain Malachite, the one that is bullied by the sexier banded boys. The reason the banded males have not taken over completely is because these less sexy boys can evade predators, with their invisible wings, much easier and, thus, still get chances to mate. This individual is also younger than the one in the previous photo. This can be deduced by the fact that the banded one is going a coppery colour, which they do as they age. "Older" is relative, of course, because the life span of an adult is around a month only.

Another special snake for our list here on the estate, a Southern Brown Egg-eater, Dasypeltis inornata, a rarely seen nocturnal snake with an uncanny ability to find freshly laid birds eggs up to the size of XL chicken eggs. The easiest identifying characteristics of the snake are the keeled scales, giving it a rough, matt appearance, and large round eyes with vertical, cat-like, pupils. Also, its aggressive response to being disturbed is quite frightening with its mouth wide open and flaying as it lunges toward the threat. It is all just a show, though, because the snake has no teeth to harm you with. Instead, it has rubbery ridges, very much like fingerprints, that make it easier for the snake to grip a smooth egg in its mouth which it then maneuvers into its neck area and cracks the shell with bony projections, attached to its vertebrae, that extend into its oesophagus. It swallows the liquid contents of the egg and regurgitates the shell in a neat, compact package. This liquid diet allows the snake to ingest much more food than that of  snakes that eat solid food, which makes these snakes a nightmare for parent birds, and bird breeders, because a whole clutch of eggs can be lost at once.  

On my way to town, all kitted out to avoid aerosol contact with others of my species, and just before reaching the railway line on Finbury's access road, I thought I saw what I thought was a cable join, on the powerlines alongside the road, moving. Is hallucination a symptom? I thought as I stopped my Landrover and reversed. No. It was a Flap-necked Chameleon, Chamaeleo dilepis, completely lost and clearly in distress. It kept trying to reach down but, of course, there was nothing to grasp. Looking further up the road I could see that there was a tree whose crown was just touching the powerlines and so I gathered that must be where it came from. It had already passed a few poles to get to where it was but it still on its way to nowhere. It's sad to see the way animals are affected by human creations like artificial lights at night for moths to reflections in mirrors for male birds to name a few. Anyway, Even though the estate is a mere 10 to 15 kilometers away, from where I was, as the crow flies, these chameleons do not occur here. The only species to occur in the highlands that is the estate, is the Transvaal Dwarf Chameleon, Bradypodion transvaalensis (see blog of February 2019). In fact, there are many bird and other animal species that occur as close to us as Nooitgedacht, that do not occur on the estate, and vice versa, with the line between the Lydenberg bushveld and montane grassland biomes being so thin.

These strange little plants are the sporophytes growing from the female part of the moss below. Mosses are common, mostly in our dark, moist forests here on the estate and can be seen growing as mats on bare ground, rocks and tree trunks. They are tiny, non-vascular plants with leaves that are usually only a cell width thick. The stem's role is purely structural with little or no passing of nutrients and water like in vascular plants. Mosses also have no roots and instead have thread-like rhizoids that function as anchors only, not absorbing nutrients and water like vascular plants' roots do either. And like fungi and clubmosses, they have no flowers and produce spores instead of seeds. These spores, when the conditions are suitable, germinated into masses of hair-like filaments, called Protonemata, that appear like a green, felt-like film on the substrate. Gamete-bearing stems and leaves grow from these protonemata which produce the male and female reproductive organs on the same plant or different ones, depending on the species. When the plants are suitably waterlogged, the male sperm swim through the water to the female receptors where the egg is fertilized and the sporophyte (above) is produced. For humans, the greatest benefits of mosses is their insulation and absorption properties and they were used, in the past and present in the coldest climes, for a variety of applications: Stuffed as insulation between gaps in the log walls of homes in Russia and Scandinavia; As insulation in boots and mittens in Canada and Alaska; For insulation in bedding by North American Indian tribes; As diapers, wound dressings and menstrual pads also by North American Indians; and even as wound dressings in the first world war.  

This is also a moss, called Haircap moss, Polytrichum sp., but it is quite different from most mosses in that its leaves' cells are more than one cell thick with erect, tightly-packed lamellae on the surface that trap moist air between them. This protects the moss in dry conditions which allows it to grow in more exposed situations, like on the bank beside the KLF road between us and Haartebeesvlakte where this photo was taken. Also, unlike typical mosses, Haircap mosses have a column of wide cells in their stems that conduct water and this column is surrounded by smaller cells that pass nutrients around. These colums are like very primitive versions of the xylem and phloem that we find in vascular plants. The mosses live for between 3 and 5 years, and when they die, they stay intact and form the base of the following generations. a bit like coral. 

I found these Hesperantha baurii flowers blooming on another bank beside a road. This time, the old road that leads from the Miner's cottage road to the goalposts up on Goudkoppies (note the Clubmoss growing beneath them). These beauties, very close relatives of the Scarlet River Lily, Hesperantha coccinea, that we love so much, bloom in autumn and early winter on vertical cliffs and banks, as well as rocky situations all at high altitudes throughout the estate.

I stayed over at the Miner's Cottage recently and I found this Bee Fly from the Bombyliidae (see blog of June 2019) resting on a Nidorella bloom in the early morning sun, waiting for it's rays to evaporate the dew drops on its body. Sometimes the situation is just right for a super shot and this was one of those. The fact that it was so still allowed me to get this shot which is in perfect focus. If you look carefully, you can even see the upside-down reflection of the Miner's Cottage with the grass around it in the large dew-drop on its thorax! I love it when a plan comes together...

And finally, a close up of the face of a Cape Eagle Owl, Bubo capensis, found by David, the foreman, injured and disorientated just outside Cochy-bundhu (unit 1) a week ago. I noticed two wounds on the back of its head and its left wing seemed hurt, not broken, but otherwise it seemed healthy. I left it outside my house for the first evening because I could see it was trying to fly and, after a few attempts it flew quite a distance and I lost it. The following morning, Simon, the hatchery manager, saw it fly unevenly over the hatchery and it landed and remained by the vehicle garage near the office. Don contacted the Dullstroom Bird of Prey and Rehabilitation Center and they said they would come out the following day, even during the lockdown, and collected it. That night we enclosed it in the hatchery and caught a rodent in a mouse trap in the recycling room and tried to feed it to the owl, but it refused the offering. On their arrival, after looking the bird over, the Bird of Prey staff declared it in a critical condition and rushed it back to the rehabilitation center. She said she believed it was attacked by another raptor, maybe on of our many eagle species, but managed to escape. They have kept us up to date and it seems as if the owl is recovering but they say it is still touch and go. We'll hold thumbs...

We will continue to keep your estate in pristine condition while you are confined to your homes, and wait, in anticipation, for your visits as soon as we conquer this bloody virus. Good luck and stay strong!