EARLY SPRING TIME

EARLY SPRING-TIME

 

It has been more than two months since my last blog and the temperature has gone from freezing to quite hot in that time. We have also had three small rain showers delivering a combined rainfall of around that ten millimeters which is not much but hopefully an indicator of early rains during spring-time which is very beneficial for our grasslands. There has certainly been a lot of cloud cover and moisture recently as one can see in the photo of Mount Anderson above, taken from the road surrounding Little Joker Koppie.

The rivers, particularly the Majubane, are running very low at the moment. Some of the members told me that they have never seen Whiskey 6 weir as low as it is. One would think this is odd considering that we had above average rainfall last season but it just goes to show how important soft rains are: So even though we had above average rains last season, (mean average for the central area over the last 11 years is 890mm, last season's total was 1037mm) a lot of it was delivered to us in the form of flash floods during our visit from Cyclone Eloise. This deluge of water fell quickly and rushed off downstream without getting much opportunity to soak into the ground. Furthermore, most of the rains for the remainder of the season were also rather violent so did not have much time to soak in as well. In contrast, the previous season's average at the central area was 704mm which is almost 20% lower than the annual average but the little rains that did fall were soft and absorbing resulting in the rivers flowing very well right through the dry season.

Thick frost on the rose-like leaves of an Ouhout tree, Leucosidea sericea. Quite a lot of moisture has resulted in some mornings being very frosty, even up until now towards the end of September. I've even noticed new seasonal leaves dying from frost while they are still buds. During all this confusion, the Ouhouts have also bloomed together with the blossoms of the Prunus trees on the estate, a sure sign of spring-time.

A pair of Sugar ants, Camponotus valdeziae, communicating  while searching for food in a forest of desiccated clubmoss. Communication is achieved by the transfer of pheromones between the two individuals. These sugar ants are what is referred to as "catholic" in their diet, meaning that they eat pretty much anything they can get hold of, be it vegetables or meaty things either hunted or scavenged. I have, so far, identified fourteen of the very many species of ant on the estate and have posted information on these amazingly successful insects on many occasions (blogs: March 2018, September 2019, January 2020, May 2020, July 2020, October 2020, April 2021 and Finsbury Autumn Wildlife) so I will not go into them except to mention that they probably evolved from a stinging wasp about 168 million years ago before the Cretaceous (145 - 60 mya). But it was only after the emergence of flowering plants around 100 mya that they began to seriously diversify and they achieved the ecological dominance they enjoy today about 60 mya. Such dominance that, in the tropics, ants account for a quarter of the total animal biomass. That means that if you take all the animals, from insects to birds to mammals etc, and weighed them, twenty five percent of that mass will be ants alone! Regarding the Clubmoss forest that the ants are foraging in, a blog from October 2020 explains how clubmosses are like a bridge between the more primitive, non-vascular mosses and the more advanced flowering plants that have advanced vascular systems that carry water and nutrients around the body of the plant. This clubmoss is referred to as Ressurection Clubmoss, Selaginella dregei, and it is called that because it desiccates completely during the dry season and turns a pale grey colour like in the picture but, after sufficient rainfall, the primitive vascular system sees to it that the seemingly dead plant inflates, stands erect and returns to its healthy green colour.

While we're on the topic of mosses, A few members have referred to the white, moss-like plants noticeable at this time of the year on the estate, as a moss. In fact, they are not mosses at all but a clumpy, carpet-like (in botany, referred to as being caespitose) version of a typical Everlasting, called a Clumpy Strawflower or, more correctly, Snowball Everlasting, Helichrysum caespititium, with minute leaves, stems and flowers (see inset). I featured this plant in my blog of September 2019 but have since discovered some more interesting things about it: Besides the safe phlorogucinol extracted from the plant, and it's known anti-microbial actions, extracts have been proven to successfully treat all four strains of N. gonorrhea. This has been an exciting discovery because there has been concern over the continuing efficacy of the existing drugs that treat gonorrhea and this extract provides a suitable alternative. A further update from the blog in 2019 is that my list of Everlastings / Strawflowers / Paperflowers has increased from 19 species to 34 since then. 

As I've mentioned before, I have to be very close to a bird with this little camera of mine to be able to get an even half decent shot so you can imagine how close this male Buff-streaked Chat, Campicoloides bifasciatus, was to me, cursing me with some nasty language it seemed. All this while I identified the community of trees and plants protected by a rocky outcrop up on the grasslands on the slopes of Little Joker Koppie, high above Morrin Pools and Jackpot Cottage on the Majubane river. These birds are endemic to the grassland biome of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland and so are a prized lifer for many international birders. The loud, melodic jumble of whistles that the birds produce are easily recognisable and used to chase away, not just other Buff-streaked Chats, but other birds too, like pipits, other chats, Stone Chats and cisticolas, from their territory. In fact, this is what I think this aggressive male bird was trying to achieve when approaching me, although I could have also been very close to a nest but I think it was a little too early for them to be breeding. The nest is a large, untidy mass of grass and roots with a cup in it that is placed on the floor, usually on the down-hill side of a large boulder or in the crevices between boulders in the sort of rocky outcrop I was visiting that day. Interestingly, unlike many birds that re-use their nests. not just in the same season but also in successive years, the Buff-streaked Chat only uses a nest for a single breeding attempt, building a new one if they have a second brood in the season. Once the chicks have fledged, they usually remain with their parents for another full season and help to raise the new offspring before going out into the big wide world for themselves.

This strange, purplish growth with a solid crust is called a King Alfred's Cake, Daldinia concentrica, and is almost the only fungus, besides lichens, that can be easily found in the forests during the end of the dry season. The name King Alfred's Cake comes from the legend that King Alfred, later Alfred The Great, the king of the West Saxons and later the Anglo Saxons in the ninth century who, while fighting the Vikings, hid out in a village house. He was requested to remove a cake from the oven when it was ready but fell asleep instead, resulting in the cake being burnt. The fungus is presumed to resemble the burnt cake. Like most fungi, King Alfred's Cake is cosmopolitan and can be found in all continents except the Arctic and Antarctic wherever trees grow. The inedible flesh of the fungi is found beneath the hard shell and is arranged in concentric rings like that of the trunk of a tree with each ring representing a season of growth which will renew each year. One can therefore estimate the age of the fungus by counting the rings. The practical uses of the fungus range from using the dried flesh as tinder when starting a fire with flintstone, to producing a colourfast purple dye to extracting a metabolite called Concentricol, which is oxidised Squalene, an organic oil, originally extracted from shark liver oil, which is required to synthesize sterol, a precursor to steroid hormones. Other common names include Carbon Balls, Coal Fungus and Crampballs.  

I went and inspected the very north-eastern block of the estate, the very first block I burned since I have been in charge of the estate's burning policy in 2017. The block was infested with Pine and so I treated it to a hot burn in October of that year just after the first thirty millimeters of rainfall for that season. The burn was very successful in destroying the Pine infestation but naturally, because of the massive seed bed these infestations created, the Pine regrowth in the block was vigorous. So once again, in October last year, I subjected the block to another hot burn after the first rains of the season (see blogs of November 2017 and October 2020). This, once again, successfully destroyed all the new Pine growth and so, a year after again, I conducted a thorough inspection of the block and can report that the Pine problem in the block is very much under control. Now, the two consequences of under-burning mesic grasslands, which encompass the estate, is that the dominant grass tufts smother their neighbouring tufts, and that the exclusion of fire helps to promote the growth and ultimate dominance of woody plants, particularly those found in the fynbos biome, like Helichrysums and Ericas. Both of these maladies negatively affect the basal cover of the grasslands. When basal cover decreases, the distance between the tufts of grass increases, resulting in an increase of bare ground and therefore, an increase in sheet erosion and the loss of topsoil during rains. So in an area that is not burned frequently enough, even if the grass swathe looks good, a closer inspection will find large areas of open ground between the grass tufts and, ultimately, the dominance of woody shrubs. In the photo above, you can see how poor the basal cover was after the last burn because of the amount exposed ground. On closer inspection, though, you will see that the two burns, three years apart, are starting to achieve positive results. I counted thirty brand new grass tufts in the green rectangle I have drawn in the photo! After the next rainy season the basal cover in the photo would have closed over completely, thoroughly improving the health and the absorption ability of the grasslands which will reduce the loss of topsoil during rains and reduce space for the woody plants to grow. The increased absorption qualities of the grasslands will, in turn, ensure that less water from the rainfall is lost to run-off, which means that the aquifers on the estate are filled properly during the rainy season, resulting in strongly flowing streams during the dry season, the ultimate function of the grasslands in a water catchment area like ours. 

On the very western side of the Zebra trail along the high altitude mountain stream that falls over the Troutkloof waterfalls, there is a nice little pool where I take a drink before ascending to the top of Goudkoppies. At this little crystal clear pool, as with most others, if you look carefully at the bottom, you will most likely see strange little insects of differing sizes that resemble the one in the photo. They are Mayfly nymphs which are also discussed in blogs of September 2019 (nymphs) and September 2020 (adult). As mentioned there, the adults are very short-lived and their only function is to find a mate and mate and lay eggs. Their short adult life is attributed to the fact that the mouthparts are fused and so the insect is unable to feed. Their tummies are filled with air which makes them rather buoyant and so when their is a "hatch" you will find a cloud of adult males dancing lightly in the air above the water. The egg-laden female detects these clouds of males and flies into it when a male will grab her from underneath with his long, double-jointed forelegs which bend awkwardly backwards and hold her wings closed and out of the way for the brief moment he mates with her in mid-air. To achieve this, the male has double eyes, a top pair to solely seek the female, and a lower pair for normal activities. The nymph in the picture is therefore a well-developed male by the presence of double eyes and wing buds. Anyway, the male dies immediately thereafter while the female will just have enough resources to develop her eggs, which are  only a quarter of a millimeter in length, and then fly across the surface of the water depositing them one-by-one as she dips her abdomen in the water. These minute eggs sink to the bottom and rest for about three weeks before hatching into tiny nymphs who swallow detritus, extract the nutrients, and excrete the rest. The larvae moult about twenty times over a period of six months up to two years, depending on the species.  

Every year at around this time, a pair of Lesser Striped Swallows, Cecropis abyssinica, come and inspect my house as a place to build their nest, I guess, because they fly into the house when the door is open and often get themselves caught on the inside against a window, resulting in me having to remove them like the one in the photo above. The swallows are intra-African migrants with complex movements specifically as monogamous pairs in our area move to the South Eastern coast during winter, whereas those from just north of us migrate into Zimbabwe and the Zim birds migrate further north. All very confusing. They have not yet approved of my house because they have never built their nest there but, if they did, they would collect mud that they roll into pellets in their beaks and coat with mucus before regurgitating the pellets as tiny mud bricks that they use to construct an enclosed bowl with a long entrance passage beneath the eaves on my patio. This elaborate and strong nest takes more than a month-and-a half to build although the monogamous pair begin roosting in it long before it is completed. Once completed the birds line the bowl inside and lay two to four eggs that are incubated by the female alone for up to three weeks before the chicks hatch. Once hatched, the chicks are fed by both parents who also remove their droppings while they are still tiny. Larger chicks reverse out to the edge of the passage entrance and defecate over the edge. After less than three weeks, the fledglings exit the nest and are still fed by the adults, with who they roost inside the nest at night, for another three to four weeks before becoming self sufficient. The adults will re-use this well-constructed nest for many years to come with some minor maintenance although, sometimes the nest is taken over by Mocking Cliff-Chats, Southern Grey-headed Sparrows or White-rumped Swifts.   

The male Leptophatnus sp., a parasitic wasp from the Ichneumonidae family, is rather easily identified as a male by the absence of a long ovipositor extending from the rear of its abdomen, a characteristic feature of Ichneumonid females. I featured a female from this family in my blog of February 2020 and a pupal case in my blog of March 2021, where I give a run-down on the family. I did inquire to as many experts as I could to why the abdomen of this male seems to have collapsed but, alas, I received no advice but when the mystery is solved, I will let you in on it...

This little critter, measuring less than a half a centimeter, is invisible against its preferred habitat of lichen-covered rocks unless it moves and you are looking very closely. It is a Booklice or Barklice from the Psocoptera order of insects and the first species illustrating that order on my Finsbury insect list. These small, primitive insects are known as Booklice when they are found, as tiny brown insects, running over stored books feeding on the paste and glue of the bookbindings. They also feed on stored cereal products and can therefore become a major pest but most species are scavengers of insect carcasses and grazers of lichens (like the above individual). Beneath the huge jaws of the insect is an extended mouthpiece consisting of a rod on each side that moves forward and backward with a forked tip. This tool is used to scrape pieces of lichen off the substrate so that it can be eaten. 

I found this beautiful grass aloe in full bloom in the clouds right near the summit of Mount Anderson just recently. The grass aloes mostly flower in the summer like most other plants and the normal aloes flower in the winter. This aloe was flowering at the end of winter and the beginning of spring. I thought it was, and it could still be, an Aloe chortolirioides wooliana but this would be outside its typical flowering time. Then I remembered an article sent to me by Tommie Steyn, a botanist at the Mpumalanga Parks, and him asking if I had found a specimen of the very localised endemic called the Mount Anderson Grass Aloe, Aloe andersonii, which was described in 2014 and ONLY occurs on the eastern and north-eastern slopes of Mount Anderson, restricted to just above the cliffs a few hundred meters below where I found this specimen. I dug out that PDF and the aloe in the above picture sure does fit the description although I will need to measure some of the flower parts to confirm. The PDF has the following to say: "The plant is Rare and confined to Mount Anderson. However, it grows on and above sheer cliffs and is well protected by its difficult to reach habitat. Consequently it is not threatened and is assessed as Least Concern (LC) in the Red List of South African plants. Aloe andersonii is only known from Mount Anderson, which is one peak in the Mpumalanga Drakensberg Escarpment Mountains. It grows on the upper, east-facing slopes, on rocky ledges, just above the sheer cliff faces, at altitudes of 1 200–1 700 m. The plants are frequently covered in fog and cloud. The mineral-poor, quartzitic sandstone rocks give rise to a poor soil to which our plants are well adapted. The Mount Anderson grass aloe shares its habitat with other succulents such a Crassula pellucida subsp. brachypetala and C. sarcocaulis, Rhodohypoxis baurii and Ledebouria saundersiae. The habitat consists of grasslands, which usually burn in the winter months. The rocky habitat ensures its survival and if it does get burnt, the older leaf remains acts as an insulator. The vegetation of Mount Anderson is Lydenburg Mountain Grassland (Mesic Highveld Grasssland Bioregion) and Northern Afromontane Forest in protected kloofs (Mucina 2006)." Exciting stuff! 

We found this Free-tailed bat from the Molossidae family hiding in the hatchery. The name "Free-tailed" comes from the fact that the tail membrane does not reach the tip of the tail like most other bats. The family does have a unique adaption to its tail: It has a ring of cartilage that circles the tail vertebrae and can be moved backwards or forwards along the vertebrae to shorten or lengthen the membrane to suit its flying needs. This, together with long, narrow wings allows it to reach very high speeds with unmatched maneuverability, with limits of nearly 100 km/h at 3 kilometers up, higher and faster than any other bat family. The drawback of these long, narrow wings is that the bat needs to launch itself from a suitable height so that it can drop long enough to reach the speeds required to obtain lift. Because of this, they are extremely good climbers, enabling them to climb high enough for take-off. I didn't know this when I caught this bat but it explains now, why the thing didn't just fly off when my hands were open. I'm afraid I don't know which species this is but suspect it is an Egyptian Free-tailed bat, Tadarida aegyptiaca, and if it is, it normally roosts in caves or mine shafts with ten or twelve other individuals but, some species in the family, can live in colonies numbering up to fifty million individuals!

That's it for springtime. My little camera has been giving me hassles and is now in for repairs in Cape Town. I will be carrying a cell phone with me on my rounds so if I see anything interesting, I can still photograph it. The phone, though, does not have the macro abilities my camera does so I feel future frustrations on their way. Anyway, once my camera returns, it will be like new again so I can take a gazillion photos of everything again and produce monthly blogs again. Stay safe and see you soon!