JANUARY 2021

 JANUARY 2021

I'm sure I remember myself whining last blog about the lack of rainfall and how wrong the long-term forecasters were.... One must be careful of what one wishes for. Here at my house, the very first day of the year 2021 started off with 65mm of rain. And so, with 13 days of rain during the month and being on the edge of Tropical storm Eloise's path, 444mm of rain fell on the central area of the estate during January. The picture of K9 and Vakatsha above was taken from the end of the Rock Kestrel trail the day after Eloise hit (notice the tall waterfall to the right and behind Vakatsha). The lowest monthly figure, 254mm, was taken from Patrick's gate and the highest from Pebble Creek on the northern end of the Kliprots road at 532mm (in one month!). That's a lot of rain! Even so, I was able to experience a bunch of exciting things relating to our beautiful environment and managed to capture some of them as follows:

Of course, all this rain has resulted in lots of moisture so the fungi of the estate are thriving. These rubbery little elf cups with a diameter of about a centimeter are the fruiting bodies of a fungus that is consuming a dead branch on the forest floor. The spores, for reproductive purposes, are formed on the shiny, pink interior of the cup and when it rains, the cup fills with water and the inner surface absorbs some of it, creating hydrostatic pressure. When it evaporates and dries out, this causes a negative vapour pressure resulting in the tissue popping outward and shooting the spores into the environment like a catapult.

This is Diploschistes muscorum, a Crater Lichen that I found adorning the high-altitude quartzite rocks exposed on the summit of Mount Anderson. If one of the spores released from the smooth grey, crater-like apothecia of one of these Lichens settles in a suitable spot, like a forest of Cladonia lichens (see blog of August 2020 - Lipstick Powderhorn), it will begin to grow. It is important to remember that the spores of a lichen are the spores of the fungal component of the association between a fungus and an algae and / or cyanobacterium. The spore has to, by absolute chance, combine with a compatible algae and / or cyanobacterium, from the onset, to survive and form an adult lichen. These fungal spores, however, begin to grow in a parasitic form on the Powderhorn lichen and slowly begin to incorporate the algae present in the host Powderhorn, within itself, effectively stealing the associated algae from the Powderhorn - leaving the fungal component of the Powderhorn, sans it's associated algae, to die! Once the host has died, the mature Crater Lichen continues to live in an un-parasitic form, as pictured above, with the stolen algae as it's associated partner. Wow! It sure is a dog-eat-dog world out there! 

Still on lichens, These light maroon discs are the apothecia of Frilly-fruited Jelly Lichen, Leptogium sp. This foliose lichen is formed from jelly-like rosettes of wavy lobes that attach themselves to twigs and branches in the shadows of the dark, moist forests found in the steep gorges on the estate. The jelly-like texture is because the associated partner of the Leptogium fungus is a cyanobacteria from the Nostoc genus, whose bacterium form colonies of dark-green jelly, usually found on lawns. Cyanobacteria are the ancient living forms that started to pump oxygen, a by-product of  photosynthesis, into the atmosphere around three-and-a-half billion years ago, paving the way for all the other living things that we know today.

I snapped this tiny little fly, less than 8mm long, supplementing it's diet on the nectar from an equally tiny flower of an, as yet, unidentified cucumber vine I found in the gorge running from the bottom chain of the Razorback road up to Black-hawk down. It is a dagger fly, Empididae, so named for it's long, piercing proboscis that it uses more for sucking the juices of it's insect prey than sucking up nectar from flowers. In fact, it is like a miniature, fragile version of a Robber Fly, one of my favourites (see blogs of 9 January 2018 and 7 November 2016). It feeds on other small, flying insects like Mayflies which it captures in flight. In fact, the larvae, which live in moist conditions like leaf litter and debris on the forest floor, are also carnivorous and eat the larvae of other insects, particularly beetle grubs. This is a male, noticeable by his bulbous eyes meeting in the middle, like with male Horse Flies, and when he wants to court a female, he will capture a prey item, wrap it in silk and present it to the female so that she can feed while he mates with her. Unlike other flies but like spiders!

These stunning violet-like flowers peeking out from gaps in the sheer cliff face below Potato Seed Production are a sight to behold! The plant is called a Galpin's Nodding Violet, Streptocarpus galpinii, and it is in the same family as the African Violets which are  widely cultivated as pot or garden plants. The plant boasts one large, quilted, felty leaf in enclosed places or, as in more exposed places like this individual finds itself in, one large leaf with a few smaller ones in a rosette. What makes these leaves special is that an abscission line forms part-way across the leaves when conditions are too dry, and the leaf withers to this point, conserving water. In other plants, abscission lines develop at the base of the leaf or it's petiole, allowing the leaves to drop off, usually at autumn time. The specific name of the plant is in honour of Ernest Edward Galpin (1858-1941), a South African banker and serious collector of plants dubbed "The Prince of Collectors" by General Jan Smuts. He collected and pressed plants throughout South Africa and is fondly remembered for donating more than 16 000 pressed specimens to the National Herbarium in Pretoria.

Talking about Nodding Violets, I found this Harvestman or Daddy-long-legs (Family Phalangiidae) on the massive leaf of a Elephant's Ear, Streptocarpus dunnii up high above Hidden Valley. A Harvestman is an arachnid and although it looks just like a spider, it is only as closely related to spiders as a scorpion is. The biggest differences are: that it's body parts are fused together so it looks as if it has only a single body segment with a single pair of raised eyes in the middle of this, while spiders have segmented bodies with three or four pairs of eyes on the front and / or sides of the cephalothorax; spiders have booklungs, lungs that work like a concertina while Harvestmen have trachea like those found in insects; unlike spiders, Harvestmen have no silk glands and therefore cannot produce silk; Harvestmen also have no venom glands that all but one family of spiders possess; and unlike spiders that are pure hunters, Harvestmen are omnivorous, eating insects and other invertebrates, plant material and fungi, which it bites and swallows, unlike spiders that liquify their prey outside of their bodies with enzymes and then consume the juices; Harvestmen also have glands in the joints of their legs that emit foul-tasting chemicals that they use as a defense. If this fails, as a last resort, they can even detach a leg which have a pace-maker-like organ at the joints causing the detached leg to twitch for as long as an hour after it has separated from the body, holding the attention of the predator while the Harvestman escapes. This is very much like what happens when a lizard loses it's tail to a predator but a harvestman must be more careful of this because it cannot regenerate it's legs like a lizard can with it's tail. And finally, unlike spiders, Harvestmen males clean and protect the batch of eggs laid by the female after she has left. Depending on the time of the season, this could take from twenty days right up to six months...

A female Drakensberg Crag Lizard, Pseudocordylus melanotus, gives me the evil eye before retreating into a narrow crack in the rocks high up on the KLF road above Hidden Valley. The male Crag Lizard, during the mating time, is easily recognisable by his contrasting colours of dark grey above and bright orange on the sides (see blog of December 2019). These lizards are well adapted to live among the rocks with their flattened heads and bodies and long thin fingers enabling them to get into, and hide in the cracks found in rocks. Once they are lodged in these cracks, it is nigh impossible to pull them out because they wedge their tails, with rings of spines, into the cracks which act like an anchor. Another adaption to living in the temperate climate that exists in it's mountainous range, is that they can tolerate temperatures up to minus five degrees Celsius. which is about as cold as it can get in these mountain habitats.  

I found this massive moth. a False Emperor, Pseudobunaea epithyrena, from the Emperor moth family, with a wingspan of 120mm, resting on the bark of the huge Willow tree just behind the office. This family, Saturnidae, contains the world's largest moths, the Atlas moths from the forests of Asia, with a wingspan reaching 300mm, bigger than a dinner plate! The larva is a massive worm hatched from a cluster of eggs that were attached, by the mother, to the food plant of the larvae. Once hatched, the larvae radiate out from the egg cluster in different directions and become solitary feeders that undergo 6 moults before spinning a cocoon around itself and developing into a pupa. If the daylength is still long enough, meaning it is around mid-summer, the pupa will develop into an adult moth within a fortnight. If the daylength is short, indicating the approach of winter, then the pupa will develop and then enter a stage of diapause which will last until the following summer before the adult moth emerges. The larvae, in their final instar, eat extra food and build up and store lipids to supply the adult with energy when they emerge because the adult moth's mouthparts are only vestigial and the digestive tract is non-existent, allowing the adult moth only a short life-span of a week or less. The adult male moth, with his broad, comb-like antennae, immediately takes flight on emerging from the pupa and uses these antennae to seek out a female (see blog of December 2019). The adult female moth emerges from her pupa and, before she takes her maiden flight, sits beside the cocoon and releases airborne pheromones which the males will, hopefully, detect from up to two kilometers away! The male moth dies soon after mating. Only after she has mated does she take flight to lay batches of eggs on various foodplants in the vicinity before she too dies. 

I'm sure everybody knows the ubiquitious but delightful Cape White-eyes, Zosterops virens, that forage through the bushes, in groups, along all the river paths and in all gardens throughout the estate. Their diminutive size and soft, trilling contact call often only revealing them when they are an arms-reach away. Because they are so small, nestlings only have about a fifty percent chance of fledging because they fall prey to smaller predators as well, like Common Fiscals, Fork-tailed Drongos, Southern Bou bous and Olive Thrushes. They normally leave the nest by twelve days old but sometimes precocially at ten days old! Those precocial ones are usually eaten by a predator because of their inability to escape, like this one that I could have easily captured on the Loop road just opposite Pebble Creek (unit 25), although the parents sure let me know how upset they were about my presence! These tiny birds are the usual victims we find impaled on an Acacia thorn (Common Fiscal) or ensnared in the huge web of a Golden Orb-weaver Spider. High chick mortality aside, adults forage in groups and so enjoy herd protection and so are quite long-lived with a ringed bird recovered twelve years and eight months later. They are monogamous breeders with pairs roosting together in separate roosts. Just before sunrise, they move from their roosting site to a meeting tree where the groups will gather before foraging together through the bushes for insects, fruits and nectar. As the day progresses, the groups splinter into smaller groups until, by late afternoon, only pairs remain. They take part in allopreening and are among only a few species of African bird that take part in anting behaviour. This is when they pick up an ant in their bill, usually a Pugnacious ant (see blogs of March 2019 and August 2020), without killing it, and stroke it through their feathers. The ant, in deep distress, releases formic acid as a defense and this acid helps kill tiny mites and other parasites that live in the bird's feathers. The birds have also been observed using a stink bugs, and their toxic excretions in anting behaviour.  

Finally, a close-up photo of a Plume moth, Stenodacma sp., in the Pterophoridae family. I captured a photo of one with it's wings unfolded in my blog of May 2019. The ability to fold their wings allows them to move easily through their grassland habitat and when at rest, the narrow wings and spines on its legs help camouflage it against the grass. 

Well, that's it for January. As mentioned at the beginning of the blog, January was a very rainy month. Above is a photo of the crossing at Whisky 6 after the water subsided somewhat! This is pretty much what all the crossings look like right into February, which seems like it is also going to be a very wet month. So far the roads are in a very poor condition but, fortunately, most other infrastructure seems to be holding up. We will keep you updated...