AUTUMN 2023
So, we had a wet summer, a dry summer's end and a very wet autumn. The photo above shows an early misty morning over the hatchery in May! Should be an awful lot drier. The autumn rainfall was 58mm at the office during April and 93mm in May. The average over the past thirteen seasons (since 2010) is 61mm for April and 13mm for May. Considering the averages, April was close to average, but May has been extraordinarily wet. This is because the weather phenomenon called La Nina ("little girl") has persisted later into the season than usual. This phenomenon is caused when the surface temperatures of the eastern part of the central Pacific Ocean, along the equator, are lower than normal, causing higher precipitation for as long as it lasts, which is usually up to five months every four or five years or so.
Unfortunately, the opposite weather phenomenon, El Nino ("little boy") is forecast for next season and so, if that happens, we can expect a season of very low rainfall.
Anyway, the grass in the valleys is still lush and green and the water levels are still okay even as we enter the cold winter months, brrrr! Actually, we have already had frost two or three times in the final fortnight of May so, if you plan on visiting, remember the warmies.
And so, a very pleasant autumn it was here on the estate. Below you can gander a few of the exciting things I found and experienced during the two months that have passed since I last published here.
Birdlife South Africa visited the Mount Anderson Water Catchment Reserve for a weekend in April to add data to the Southern African Bird Atlas project. Certainly not the best time of the season for birding because all the migrants would already have returned to their warmer destinations by this time, but, amazingly, the group managed to compile a list of 133 birds within two days! This figure is so high because they also explored the parts of the Lydenburg bushveld biome within the reserve's boundaries, which boasts many bushveld bird species, like those found in the Kruger Park, that do not occur here in the mesic and mist-belt grasslands of the estate. The consolidated list for Finsbury itself was 51 species, which is exceptional in our open biomes in only two outings!
Three species of Bushveld bird that were spotted on the very fringes of our boundary with the bushveld biome, that I have not seen on the estate before, include Blue Waxbill, Black-collared Barbet and Red-billed Quelea. Otherwise, exciting new species for our Finsbury bird list include Striped Pipit, White-fronted Bee-eater, Southern Double-collared Sunbird, Common Quail and Holub's Golden Weaver. The common yellow weaver found at the central area are, in fact, the Holub's, not the Cape Golden Weaver. I confirmed this by comparing the calls after I had learned they were spotted by this group. Also, the Southern Double-collared Sunbird could easily be overlooked with its close cousin, the Greater Double-collared sunbird a common sighting here on the estate.
Also, I will be adding a further three species to our list, last updated in twenty-twenty, that have been sighted since that update. These are Wood Owl, confirmed calling in the thickets in the Steenkamp's valley by the Dampiers and MacLartys from Kliprots Creek (unit 2) some time ago; European Nightjar as mentioned in one of my recent blogs; and a Lanner Falcon which I had a very clear sighting of, very recently, up on the Zebra trail. That's an extra ten species for our list, bringing it to 168 species so far recorded on the estate!
It's funny how, with even just the knowledge of the visit by the Birdlife folks, I began seeing birds that I had not seen before on the estate, just by being more vigilant about it, like the Lanner Falcon sighting just after they departed. A mere two days before the group visited, I noticed a pair of Bee-eaters perched on the powerlines above The Croft's (unit 19) on passing and just assumed they were a pair of overwintering European Bee-eaters that we so often encounter on the estate during the summer months. Then it dawned on me that they had white on their fronts so, the next time I drove past there, I kept my eyes open and, true as nungies, there they were again in the same area. This time perched on the exposed bank by The Crofts' entrance way. Definitely a pair of White-fronted Bee-eaters and very exciting.
Then, at the end of autumn, in the dying days of May, while passing by early in the morning, I noticed three of them emerge from a hole in the bank, about fifty or so meters from our entrance gate, within Highland Run. I stopped and investigated and found this hole (above) in the bank. The give-away is the double tracks on the floor of the hole, which is caused by the birds' feet as they shuffle to the entrance, crouched over.
Normally, White-fronted Bee-eaters nest in colonies, with each nest constructed and the brood cared for by an extended family consisting of the parents and a few of the previous season's offspring, neighbouring the following nest chamber etcetera etcetera, resulting in a number of nest holes in a single exposed vertical earthen bank. In this instance, however, it is clearly a single nest of a newlywed pair of birds that have started from scratch, or whose previous nest was perhaps disturbed. Being more of a savanna and woodland species, this is, I'm sure, on the very fringes of suitable habitat for these birds. This may be able to explain why, what we have here, is not a typical situation for the species.
A one meter long, 40mm diameter hole excavated in a vertical earthen bank has some distinct advantages as a nest sight. Most importantly, it is inaccessible to predators, making it an ideal place to raise young. Also, it is extremely well insulated, so temperatures within do not fluctuate excessively, helping to keep the chicks warm. In fact, these birds incubate their eggs less than other birds because of this.
The biggest disadvantage, however, is a lack of oxygen and a build-up of carbon dioxide and ammonia vapour within the nesting chamber. To alleviate this, the parents are required to visit the nest frequently, even without food, because the piston effect created by their coming and going pumps the gases out, and allows oxygen in.
Gotcha! Towards the end of autumn, the beautiful violet daisies of the Wild Aster (see blog Winter 2022 for more about the bush) begin to bloom en masse on the estate. This is obviously very attractive to the various insects that are attracted to the nectar within the flowers, and so, it stands to reason that this is a good time for predators to lie in wait on the daisies...
This is exactly what this Crab spider from the Thomisidae family did. The Crab spider is capable of changing its body colour, like a chameleon, to suit the colour of the flower it has decided to settle on. Once this happens, it becomes almost invisible to the pollinators that are attracted to the flower as it sits on the petals, with its powerful forelegs spread wide, waiting for them.
In this case, it was a beautiful Golden-spotted Sylph that alighted on the flower and BANG! The spider grabs it with those powerful legs and injects its potent venom into the victim before it can struggle free. Besides killing the victim, the venom also begins to liquify the insides of the victim so that once the spider chews through the tough skin, it can lap up the innards that leak out before discarding the empty carapace. This is an extremely messy process because spiders, being much more primitive than insects, have not yet acquired a bottom lip, so you can imagine the mess when trying to suck and shovel thick soup into a mouth without a bottom lip. What a mess.
Wow! What beautiful artwork is this chrysalis of an African Monarch caterpillar, as it went in, and butterfly when it emerges. I found it attached to the fat, juicy leaves of a Paddle plant, Kalanchoe thyrsiflora (see blog: Succulents of Finsbury Estate for more on this plant) I encountered on the highest point of the Rock Kestrel trail on a hike one day recently. See my blog "The Jolly Season 2018" to see the butterfly and the egg and learn about the poisons found within.
You will notice that I called this thing a chrysalis as opposed to a cocoon, and it was for a good reason. Both perform the same duty by enclosing and protecting the pupa from the elements while the body of the insect rearranges itself from a caterpillar into an adult butterfly. The difference is that a cocoon is constructed from silk produced by the caterpillar and woven into a cocoon, while a chrysalis is the final shed skin that is modified. So, the caterpillar uses silk strands to secure its body to the substrate then sheds its skin for the final time but, instead of discarding it, it retracts back into it and seals it off, allowing the hardened skin to become the pupa.
A typical fairyland toadstool recognisable from the time of the smurfs and before! It is a Fly Agaric mushroom, Amanita muscaria, fully developed with a cap diameter of 150mm, growing from the fallen oak leaves carpeting parts of Morrin Pools during autumn and winter months. The characteristic white flakes sprinkled on the top are actually the remains of the protective skin, or universal veil, surrounding the young mushroom that was a much smaller round ball like an egg as it developed.
The Fly Agaric gets its common name from the fact that it was powdered and mixed with milk to attract and kill flies, from as far back as the eleventh century in the central and north-eastern northern hemisphere. The ingredients, mainly muscimol and ibotenic acid, are responsible for the death of the flies, and the milk, the fly attractant. These two ingredients are also responsible for the hallucinogenic effects produced when ingested by shamans and their ilk in their quest to communicate with their ancestral spirits and gods in the mushroom's native areas in the north-central and north-eastern northern hemisphere, also, since the beginning of time.
Because of this, it is also the mushroom responsible for more than ninety percent of mushroom poisoning cases worldwide, although, if boiled sufficiently, it is quite edible and eaten as food in many northern cultures as well.
This mushroom has spread to all continents together with pine and birch trees, popular in timber plantations, as a mycorrhiza, a symbiont attached to the roots of those species. It is also a mycorrhiza that associates with Oak trees, hence it's presence at Morrin Pools. The mushroom in the photograph is the fruiting body of the fungus, and only develops above ground when the fungus wants to produce reproductive spores. The actual structure of the fungus is a three-dimensional network of thin strands or threads that that grow in the soil and colonise the cortical cells of the roots of the Oak tree.
These threads, or properly, mycelia, have an enormous surface area as they occupy the soil surrounding the tree's roots and can, therefore, connect to the roots of suitable neighbouring trees too. So, in return for some of the sugars produced by the tree through the action of photosynthesis, the fungus will supply the tree with minerals and water that the tree cannot access alone. They can also enable the tree to send nutrients to a neighbouring tree, even if it a different species! This also enables the trees to "communicate" with each other by sending signals, via the myorrhiza, to neighbours when it is attacked by predators, like aphids, and the neighbouring trees can begin to produce compounds that taste bad to the predator, or even attract the enemy of the predator, parasitic wasps!
The complexity of nature is only just beginning to be appreciated to us simple humans, isn't it?
The beautiful paper daisy flower of a Pink Everlasting, Helichrysum adenocarpum, that blooms in the autumn time in our high-altitude grasslands and rockeries. It is a plant belonging to the Asteraceae or Compositae (both accepted names for the Daisy Family), and, like all members of this enormous family, a single flower (as seen above) is, in fact, a composite of many flowers. In this case, the yellow portion of the flower is the capitulum, which is actually a disc with more than fifty tiny, but separate, flowers, each with their own male and female parts, crowded together. These tiny flowers are called disc florets. The "petals" are actually hard, papery bracts, arranged in several rows, that fold over the capitulum to protect the flowers when the flower is closed because the sun is not shining.
In a "normal" daisy, the yellow capitulum does actually have petals, but each petal is a single, separate flower called a ray floret, and these surround the disc florets to create a typical daisy flower.
Now, this is the largest family in South Africa, where the family is very well represented with many subfamilies and genera endemic to the region. They are used around the world for many things, from medicines, coffee substitutes, vegetable oil producers, food plants, insecticides and ornamentals. In South Africa, the best-known would be Sunflowers, the daisies of Namaqualand, the Cosmos that line our roads, irritating blackjacks, and, of course, the Barberton Daisy, which is the fifth most cultivated ornamental plant on the planet.
On a little promenade along my newly cut pathway (just to make it circular) from the Bushpig Alley path, just before entering the gorge between Pebble Creek (unit 25) and Kliprots Creek (unit 24), back around to the Kliprots road, we spend some time walking along the base of flat, rocky cliffs hosting many species of lichens. In fact, some of it even looks as if someone has spray-painted the rocks in some places, with different colour crustose lichens!
Anyway, while I was blabbering on about these lichens, one of the group members pointed to a spider hiding close to where my hand was. Embarrassingly, the spider had to actually be pointed out to me because it was so well camouflaged amongst the lichen that I still could not see it! When I did, I was really impressed with the spider's camouflage. Well done! Like a bark spider (refer blog Autumn 2022 for a bark spider with local comouflage variations), also in the Araneidae family, the hairy field spiders spin a beautiful radial orb-web in the late afternoon to early evening. After hopefully catching prey in the night, like mozziez and moths, and drinking it up, the spider deserts the web (unlike the bark spider that eats it) and retreats to its day resting spot, where it will be able to curl up and disappear for the day.
Unfortunately, I haven't managed to properly identify it yet. It belongs to the genus Neoscona, which are commonly called hairy field spiders. Refer to my blog of February 2019 for the interesting life history of a hairy field spider, N. hirta, very closely related to this, although less than a third of the size, which I encountered on the estate. In fact, although the field spiders are extremely common where they are found, which is almost everywhere on the planet except Antarctica, there are only a hundred and thirty-odd species in the genus as of twenty-twenty-two, with seventeen occurring in South Africa.
Sometimes things take long to identify but, with the internet and all its specialised groups and clubs, and constant follow-ups, sooner or later a break-through occurs. Only once did I encounter the above species of flower, high up at the top of a gorge leading up the watershed towards our boundary with Komatiland Forestry, way beyond Pebble Creek, and I thought it was Lobelia erinus, a popular garden subject, although, besides a striking resemblance, the habitat and flower size were atypical of that species.
Okay, so recently the flower was finally properly identified by one of the specialists as a Long Tom One-eye, Monopsis kowynensis, from a genus very closely related to, and previously included in, the Lobelia genus, all in the Bell flower family (Campanulaceae). It's exciting because it is rather rare and only known from a few locations in the Long Tom mist belt and it is rated as VU (vulnerable) in the SANBI Red List. If any species is not rated as "Least Concern" on this Red List, like the above plant, then it enjoys protection as per South African law, further strengthening our status as a conservancy and ensuring mining does not return to our mountains.
The specific name refers to a Bakwena chief, named Chief Kobeng Moxane, known as Chief Kowyn by the Voortrekkers, who was exiled, with his tribe, from the highveld during the tumultuous Southern African war or Mfecane, which started in the late eighteenth century and ended in the mid ninteenth century. He showed the Voortrekkers the natural migration path that led from the escarpment, one thousand meters down into the lowveld. This enabled them, and later the gold diggers (think Jock of the bushveld), to travel from the highveld to Delagoa bay (Maputo), creating an important trading route.
So far, on Finsbury estate, we have identified 33 plant, 2 butterfly, 12 bird and 11 mammal species that are of conservation concern because of their Red List status, making us an important conservation area. Pretty cool, eh?
I have mentioned the badly named Robber Fly as one of my favourite insects. Badly named because they are supreme hunters and never scavenge and I love them because they kill irritating flies as they circle my face. Well, even such rapacious hunters become the hunted sometimes. I encountered this scene close to the Serenity sundowner spot (old site 26) at the end of the Hidden Valley Road.
It was early morning and, judging by the dew covering the body of the Robber fly victim, the spider snuck up to a roosting Robber fly and attacked it from the rear. Although Robber flies prey on other flying invertebrates, morphologically, they are more than capable of killing and consuming a Wolf spider like this. So, this is a true case of eat or be eaten!
That's it for the autumn months this year. Winter has set in and it is getting colder each day. Let's see what the winter months bring...
PS: Now, there have been many leopard sightings in the last while and, although this is very exciting, it can also be a little worrying for some of you with little children and pooches. This trend of sightings has come and gone over the years, and the way Don has described it in his recent letter to members is the best way to put it. It does not mean there are more leopards than usual. We are privileged to be able to stay together with these magnificent animals within the ecosystem on the reserve, but we need to be aware of the potential hazards associated with them. A leopard will not attack an adult human unless under extreme circumstances. I have always maintained, correctly I believe, that there is more chance of an aeroplane landing on me than a leopard attacking me on this estate, even when walking on my own. But it is well-known that leopards like to prey on dogs, although not when accompanied by humans, and very young children may be at risk if they are alone. So just make sure someone is keeping an eye on the younger kids and dogs while you are on the estate and the chances of anything going wrong are close to zero. And enjoy the sightings...
