OCTOBER 2020

 OCTOBER 2020

October certainly started off with a bang with 36mm of rain falling on the first two days and another 80mm falling over the following week. It was definitely enough to get everything growing nicely but, unfortunately, there was no further rainfall during the rest of the month. But the lifting of the more stringent Covid-19 restrictions seemed like a floodgate being opened and so we had lots of visitors which means I enjoyed leading many mountain and gorge walks. Although we do enjoy large animal sightings on these hikes, it is not always the norm. But this month I got to see quite a lot: like a distant sighting of a leopard while walking with Sue Band and friends from Finsbury House (unit 23) high up near the Troutkloof waterfall; or being approached and then by-passed by a herd of around fifty Blesbuck, Damaliscus dorcas phillipsi, pictured above, near the summit of Mount Anderson with Paige and friends from Rod's Rest (unit 7). I have described a few of the other interesting things I saw and did during the month below:

I encountered this spiny, squat little lizard up in Flavida plains on the Miner's cottage road in the heat of the day. It initially attempted to hide away from me but when I exposed it, it approached and looked straight up at me like this. It is a Ground Agama, Agama aculeata, and I thought it was rather cute. But I may not have approached it so closely with my little camera if I had read what I read after taking the picture: that they are aggressive for their size and very willing to bite with sharp teeth that project from the outside of their jaws, like with Chameleons, Iguanas and Bearded Dragons, within whose suborder they reside taxonomically. Fortunately though, it didn't jump up and attack my face. Another feature these lizards share with their chameleon cousins is that they are able to change colour. Not to blend into their environment like a chameleon since their habitat is quite consistent and so their fixed cryptic colouration certainly suffices. But they will darken when needing more heat and lighten when needing to cool down and also the males can attain bright colouration, particularly around the neck and head, during the breeding season to help advertise himself to potential mates. The best example that all who visit the Kruger Park will know, is the Bloukopkoggelmander that bobs its bright blue head up and down on his territorial tree. The male Ground Agama's head also turns blue, albeit not as brightly as the Bloukopkoggelmander, and he establishes a ground-based territory and advertises by bobbing his colourful head from atop a large stone or boulder in a prominent spot within it. Since it is well into the breeding season I would surmise that the above individual is either a female, or a juvenile male who both remain cryptic at this time. 

This massive Twig Wilter Bug, Anoplocnemis curvipes, was perched atop a grass stem beside Loop road just after the first heavy rains of the month. Remember, all true bugs (Hemiptera order of insects) have sucking mouthparts which are used to suck juices from their vegetable or animal prey, and this bugs powerful mouthparts can be seen tucked beneath its chin. It inserts this sucking apparatus into a young twig of its chosen plant and injects an enzyme which liquifies the plants' cells so the bug can suck them up. Most vegetarian bugs like Aphids (blogs of July 2019 and January 2020) or Spittle bugs (blogs of February 2019 and April 2019) don't have to liquify their food first because they insert their probiscids into the phloem, the vascular tunnels that transport sugars and minerals around the plant, and suck up the fluids therein, This allows them to suck up large quantities of juices that they can filter and use as protection as in the Spittle bugs, or food for body guards as in the Aphids. The Twig Wilter bugs' use of enzymes to liquify the plants cells provide it with less juices but more nutrition. This injection of enzymes also causes the young twig of the plant to immediately wilt, giving the bug its common name. Once the female lays her eggs in a row, within the stems of the chosen plant, she hangs around nearby and protects the site. After the nymphs have hatched, she still remains nearby to protect them with the strong-smelling, toxic fluid that she can emit from the gland just in front of where the rear leg attaches to the body (surrounded by reddish skin in the photo). Oddly, of all the literature I scraped together on this bug, which was quite a lot, there was always mention of the enlarged back legs but never a reason given for it being swollen like that. 

I'm touching the new shoots of this Cascade Asparagus, Asparagus ramosissimus, that occurs commonly in our forested gorges. The fresh tips of these shoots, or spears, are edible like the cultivated species but a lot smaller. The roots are also a good source of nourishment and were always included in the lists of edible plant matter in our survival courses back in the lowveld. But this species' habit of its quickly growing, heavily branched, up to three meter long trailing branches cascading over the edges of rocks in the gorges make it a grand garden rockery subject for shaded spots. It is truly beautiful in that setting and easy to grow from seed.

This is the tiniest of the Sugar Ants, a Hairy Sugar ant, Camponotus niveosetosus, at six or seven millimeters long, upon a lichen-encrusted boulder up on the grassland flats of Goudkoppies. These are among the most widespread South African sugar ant and also the ant most commonly associated with butterflies of the Lycaenidae family (see the Lydenburg Copper in the January 2020 blog for an idea of the butterfly larvae life cycle; and also see 'Some small animals' blog from 19 November 2018) and the care and upbringing of their caterpillars by ants (Myrmecophily). Caterpillars with thick, leathery integument so the bite and handling by ants does not affect them. Caterpillars that don't inherently wriggle when molested so that they don't excite the ants. Now it's the honeydew that the caterpillar produces from the seventh segment of its body that initially attracts the ant. But, as discussed above, the caterpillars chew plant material, they don't suck the juices from the vascular system so they cannot produce copious amounts of this 'honeydew' like aphids and spittle bugs do. The caterpillar's main objective, though, is just to get the ants near them so that they will be able to pick up the 'ant' pheromones that the caterpillar is releasing from small epidermal glands dotted over much of its body. These pheromones, produced by the caterpillar, are the same as the pheromones the ants produce to tell other ants to stay calm! Clever eh? In fact, the caterpillars have a pair of tubercles on their eighth segment that appear to have an olfactory function that prevents the ants from over-utelising the honeydew producing gland. Crazy.

I posted a blog in November 2017 called "A Successful Burn" and it was all about the very hot management fire that we burned to help rid the very north eastern block of the estate of woody plants, including large seed-bearing Pines. In that blog I explained why a hot fire was necessary and in further blogs (April 2019 and February 2020) I have explained the advantages of the Patch Mosaic burning plan that we have adopted at Finsbury. This is when we burn more smaller blocks each year in the wet season to simulate lightning fires. That very north eastern block that we burned hot has had three years to regrow and therefore this season was the right time to burn again. But since it was previously infested with large seed-bearing Pine trees, the majority of the seedbank in the block has germinated, resulting in swarms of new Pine saplings invading the same block again. This means that another hot fire was necessary so I planned on burning it, again, after the first significant rains of the season. Well, that happened at the beginning of the month and, once again, a successful hot burn was completed. In the picture above, you will notice Andries Maphanga, one of our senior field workers, igniting the fire from the bottom of the hill and behind him, the huge flames rapidly consuming the green field of Pine on the slope. The old tree skeletons in the picture are the remains of the larger Pines that were destroyed in the previous burn. We are winning the war against alien invasive plants here in Finsbury and although fire is only one of the weapons that we are using, it is a very powerful one against Pine. Another successful controlled burn... 

I remember a few years ago, Fraser Moore from Rock Solid (unit 22) gave me a photo of a Spotted Harlequin Snake, Homoroselaps lacteus, that he had encountered on one of his very long hikes up into the mountains. Having never worked in the grassland biome before coming to Finsbury, I had only ever seen pictures of the snake before and was quite jealous of the young man. Finally, while on a walk along the Zebra trail during the month, I saw a flash of colour from my peripheral. After some searching I finally came across the most colourful snake I have ever seen, a Spotted Harlequin snake. And the photograph does not do it justice. It is a highly glossy, fast-moving and vigorous snake whose erratic movements, combined with the bright, shiny, contrasting colours, confuse a potential predator, making it harder to pin-point and capture. This is the same sort of result a Zebra gets with its contrasting stripes and erratic movements when escaping predators. This endemic snake is venomous, has a very narrow gape and broad fangs in the front of its mouth with hardened scales on its snout. This design is adopted by snakes, like Burrowing Asps, that follow and catch other burrowing animals in small, confined areas. Very little is known about the venom but it appears to be very similar to that of its cousins, the Burrowing Asps, and therefore could be harmful to humans. Beware this beauty if you are a legless lizard, blind snake, thread snake or even termites and their larvae because you will always need to have one eye over your shoulder in those closed spaces you thought were safe!

This attractive flower belongs to a small tree or bush from the Mint family called Blue Cat's Whiskers, Rotheca myricoides. The tree is found on forest fringes and in riparian areas but is not common in either of those. There is an easy-to-find specimen at the lowest point of the dip in the path that runs from Solitude (unit 5) to its water tank. The plant was originally placed in the Clerodendron genus in the Verbenaceae family but, after molecular and genetic studies carried out in 1998, it was moved to the Rotheca genus in the Lamiaceae (mint family). Its habit of rapid growth combined with the attractive foliage make it a sought after garden subject but it is most suited as a large pot plant for a patio. It also responds well to pruning, which makes it very dense with copious amounts of bloom.

A beautiful mosaic of mosses carpet a south-facing (always shady) quartzite boulder at high altitude on Mount Formosa. The ropes are Running Clubmoss, Lycopodium clavatum, and the green bottom right is Haircap moss, Polytrichum sp; while the pale moss is a luxurious bog moss from the Sphagnum genus. The pale bog moss is a true moss which is non-vascular and whose roots act only as anchorage; the Haircap moss is also a true moss, but it has columns of enlarged cells that conduct water surrounded by smaller cells that pass nutrients around. Sort of like very primitive xylem and phloem. Its roots also act only as anchorage; then the Running clubmoss is also a very primitive plant that produces spores instead of seeds like the two previous species but it is vascular, with roots that absorb water and nutrients, and xylem and phloem that transport these throughout the plant. My blog of 25 April 2020 gives more on mosses and Haircap mosses but the pale bog moss is what excites me the most because it is quite rare in Africa and a great find. It is very common in the northern hemisphere, New Zealand and the south of South America where it plays a vital role in the creation of peat bogs because by storing large quantities of water, it prevents the decay of dead plant material. The moss contains two different types of cells: one containing chlorophyll which is used in the process of photosynthesis and the other as large, dead, structural cells that hold water up to twenty times the plants' weight. Sphagnum / bog / peat mosses are well known to gardeners because it is sold in nurseries to be used as a soil conditioner, increasing the soils capacity to store nutrients and water. It is also used as a natural wound dressing because of its absorption qualities and its acidity, which prevents bacterial and fungal growth. When I touched the moss, it felt so very soft and it was about fifteen centimeters deep! Very luxurious.

I explained how a foundress Umbrella Paper Wasp establishes her little colony in my blog of June 2019 but I learned something new when researching this similar species, Polistes fastidiotus: When the larvae, who are restricted to their hexagonal cells, see a nurse wasp arrive on the scene with chunks of yummy caterpillar, they bulge out from their cells while opening and closing their gaping mouths and some even scratch against the sides of their cells to create a noise, begging for the food like a bird chick would. What I found out is that the nurse wasp has a motivation to feed the larvae, and that is a clear, viscous liquid that leaks from the side of the larva's mouth when it is touched by the nurse, which is obviously to the taste of the nurses because they relish it. In fact, it has been found that, when a nurse wasp is not in attendance, other male and female wasps sometimes try to solicit this liquid gold and if the larva does not release some, the wasps can become aggressive and try to pull the larva from its receptacle and then suddenly shove it violently back until it emits some! 

For the past fortnight I have had a pair of these Lesser Striped Swallows, Cecropis abyssinica, visiting around my house for entire days at a time. If I open my sliding door they enter my lounge and sometimes come to a rest on my window sill while making quite a racket. I initially thought they were planning on building a nest under the eave of my patio but, either they are very careful and, even after all this time, they have still not decided, or they simply enjoy the insects around my house and have a nest elsewhere. When building a nest, they collect soft mud from the sides of puddles and mold it into a pellet in their mouths, fly to the nest site and add the pellet to their mud construction. The finished product, which takes two or three weeks plus to complete, is a sealed bowl with a long entrance tunnel, attached to the underside of a rock overhang or bridge or house's roof eave. The construction is undertaken by both sexes in their monogamous relationship and they begin to roost in the unfinished nest already when it is only half complete. The female lays an average of three eggs which are incubated solely by her while she is being fed by the male for two to three weeks. Both sexes spend 18 days feeding the rapidly growing chicks until they are fledged and taught to fly. They all roost together as a family for another month or so thereafter before the chicks depart and the breeding pair begin with their next brood. This happens two to three times a season and the breeding pair often return to the same nest year after year, either simply repairing the nest from last year, or breaking it up completely and building a new one where the old one was. 

This little colony of mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of a single fungus which contains a very powerful set of peroxidases that decompose both cellulose and lignin in hardwoods, causing white wood rot. Not common mushrooms, these Large-pored Funnel Caps, Polyporus arcularius, can be found on dead hardwood trunks and branches deep in our forested gorges. Most mushrooms that we are familiar with have gills on the underside of the cap that release the reproductive spores (same spores as in the primitive plants at the beginning of the blog) while these chaps have elongated pores which is noticeable in the photo. Medicinally, extracts of mycelial culture from these mushrooms showed antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium and Staphylococcus aureus, all bacterium associated with severe food poisoning.

Another fungus, this time a bracket fungus called Turkey's Tail Mushroom, Trametes versicolor, is also found in our forested gorges, but more commonly than the above species. Although not edible to humans, this mushroom is very yummy to a bunch of insects like the caterpillars of the Fungus moth, Nemaxera sp, the maggots of the small, hunch-backed, forest-dwelling flies, Polyporivora picta, that form dancing clouds at dusk and dawn; and the Fungus Gnat, Mycetophila sp from overseas. Medicinally, though, Polysaccharide K and Polysaccharidepeptides can be obtained from the mycelium of the mushrooms. These extracts have been clinically used in cancer therapy, treating hepatitus, hyperlipidemia, chronic bronchitis and others since 1977 in China and Japan.  

Look at this stunning little forest of Lichens (see blogs The Jolly Season 2018, May 2019 and January 2020) residing together on a small branch on a dead tree high up in the mist belt above Kliprots valley. A five rand coin would easily cover the entire forest! There are three different species of lichens here, representing all the different lichen forms. The orange standing discs are the apothecia (spore-producing fruiting bodies) of the yellow, twiggy Teloschistes pulvinaris lichen which is a good example of a fruticose lichen. The grey pot with the pink porridge in it is an apothecia of the grey lichen called  Hypotrachyna, which is a good example foliose lichen. Then, finally, the circular, browny discs on the right of the picture are the apothecia of Lecanoria sp which is a good example of a crustose lichen. Looks like plants from Mars...  

That's it for October. Although the estate is looking lush and green, we could still do with a lot more rain and let's hope that November is the month for that. Can't wait to see you all here for the festive season. Have a great November.