SPRINGTIME 2023

 SPRINGTIME 2023

A very dry springtime has been had, but the estate is still lushly verdant, thanks to the 230mm rainfall that has fallen in nice, soaking episodes until now, the end of November. Bear in mind that our average rainfall over the estate, measured since 2010, is just north of 900mm per annum, so 230mm halfway through our wet season is not very good. So, although the estate is green and beautiful, the river levels are still quite low. 

Springtime, my favourite, is when our winter-greys are suddenly interupted by flashes of colour (see the Tulp below) and the million different greens begin to emerge. And the life! After the first decent rains, all the creepy crawlies have hatched, emerged from coccoons or woken up and are all very busy with their tasks. 

The cover photo is of a pair of Long-stem Bushlilies, Clivia caulescens, proudly inviting the sunbirds to enjoy their copious nectar, while carrying pollen from flower to flower in the Majubane gorge, not far from the waterfall. Once the flowers are pollinated, the ovary expands into the fruit that takes nine months to ripen fully. Then a bunch of animals like rodents, monkeys and birds will spread the seeds around after enjoying the thin layer of fruit enveloping them.

At the very first hint of spring, the plant that never fails to appear first is the Pallid Tulp, Moraea pallida, with its very long, slender leaves snaking out of the lawns around the office first, before the bright lemon-yellow flowers appear, almost like the spark that kicks springtime into gear. 

The Moraea genus is what is regarded as our African Irises because the flowers so resemble the flowers of the Irises from the northern hemisphere. The most notable difference between the two is that the Moraea have a bulb while the Iris have a woody rootstock. Our Moraea occur in fire-prone habitats like grasslands and fynbos and so the bulb has evolved so that fire only inflicts superficial damage. We do have an Iris-like plants here on the estate with a woody rootstock, the Forest Iris, but that occurs in the Dietes genus and grows in the forests where fire is not a threat. All three genera are closely related and reside in the same tribe within the Iris family.

It has never appeared, to me, that anything eats the plant, which makes sense because it is well-known that these plants are poisonous to domestic cattle. But this year, a porcupine, or more than likely a family of porcupines, decided that the bulb of this plant was a delicacy fit for the king of all porcupines! Over a period of about a week or so, almost every single Pallid Tulp was a stringy mess lying on the floor, beside a little excavation where its bulb used to be!

It may have been the same culprits that devoured the bulbs of the gladioli I was so looking forward to seeing bloom naturally in my garden.......Mmn, wondering if we should have porcupine roast for Christmas dinner...... ;)

Another really groovy thing about springtime is that all the snakes are really hungry after a long fast over the wintertime, and so are seen all over the place (in the bush, not the houses). Do remember though, that snakes don't hibernate in Southern Africa, they are just much less active during the winter. Mostly not actively looking for food, but still exiting their hiding places on warmer winter days to sun themselves.

This was a Cross-marked Sandsnake, Psammophis crucifer, trying to sun itself on the road near K33, before I came along. Being ectothermic (cold-blooded), they need to acquire a suitable temperature before they are optimally active. Once they have achieved this, then, in this case because these snakes are active in the daylight, the snake will begin its daily activities which could entail hunting or acquisition of a mate or, if female, a nesting site to lay eggs.

Sandsnakes are fast pursuit predators that actively find and then chase down their prey, which for the Cross-marked sandsnakes, is almost exclusively lizards although young, small snakes feed mainly on arthropods, from scorpions to grasshoppers to spiders. Larger individuals will also catch and eat other snakes, like Slugeaters. I have, on a few occasions, actually seen a close relative from the lowveld, a Stripe-bellied sandsnake, chase and catch Grassveld lizards which are extremely fast runners. It is truly amazing to see a snake, without legs, chase down a lizards with longs legs successfully. It is very fast!

You must admit, though, that, for a snake, this sandsnake has quite a cute face....

Gee, unlike the snake above, this monster is far from cute! What a terrifying last sight for whatever unfortunate prey was the last victim! This is a Kalahari Ferrari, Camel Spider or Sunspider, Solpugema hostilis, from the Solifugae order in the chelicerata class of arthropods (Insects are another class of arthropods), the same class that spiders and scorpions belong to. Interestingly, solifuge means: "seeking refuge from the sun"; and it so happens that some species run from shadow to shadow, often to your shadow, which makes them appear as if they want to attack! 

Although it resembles a spider, it is different in the fact that these have no silk glands and no venom glands. Their Pedipalps (the blurry limb that is almost touching the camera lens, and the one to the left of it) are also massive as compared to spiders, and so appear as an extra pair of legs, giving the appearance of a ten-legged spider.

And so, despite the horrifying appearance and the fact that they can inflict a painful bite with those massive jaws, these arachnids are harmless to us humans. We found this specimen up on the Spioenkop Mine walk with the Andersons from Kingfisher Lodge (those kids have got such sharp eyes!) Some species, like this one, are diurnal (active in the day), and many species, especially the huge orange ones from the lowveld, are nocturnal and attracted to the insects that are attracted to campfires and artificial lights. I have heard many a shrill scream emitted once contact is made with unsuspecting people!

When hunting, the Kalahari Ferrari runs across the open ground at an astounding speed, generally in a straight line until it runs into a prey animal (any arthropod that it can overpower). It then subdues the victim by standing on it and just begins to devour it by slashing those massive jaws! It eats almost as quickly as it runs!

While we're on arachnids that are not spiders, here's another two examples, one being a massive burden on the other! The poor host is a Harvestman, an arachnid. I featured Harvestmen in my blog of January 2021. This is what I shared there: "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 its 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 its 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 its 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."

The second type of arachnid in the photo are the numerous bright orange baby mites, or larvae, attached to the limbs of the Harvestman. Mites belonging to this large and cosmopolitan genus, Leptus, are parasitic as six-legged larvae and use a wide range of arthropods on which to feed. Most common hosts are arachnids like the Harvestman above. Mite larvae pierce the cuticle of the host and ingest hemolymph and other fluids via a piercing mouthpart, a stylostome, which acts as a drinking straw. After engorging, larvae drop off the host and transform into eight-legged nymphs and then adults. Both adults and nymphs are free-living predators of very, very small invertebrates.

(notice: In baby insects, those with a pupal stage are called LARVAE; those without a pupal stage are called NYMPHS. With these guys, the first stage, which only has six legs, is called the LARVAE. Then the next stage, after it drank its fill of body fluids and dropped off the host, is its NYMPH stage. Only after its next moult does it reach the adult stage.)

It sure is a dog-eat-dog world out there! 

Now, it doesn't look like it, but these two ant species are much more of a threat to us humans than the Kalahari Ferrari featured previously. They're both primitive ants belonging to the Ponerinae subfamily (the most primitive) of the Formicidae family (all the ants belong in a single family) in the Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) order of insects.

In the first picture, the odd-looking, pock-marked ant is a Rugged Ringbum ant, Bothroponera pumicosa. Most ponerines, including the Rugged Ringbum (about 12-15mm long), live in very small colonies of up to a dozen individuals, though some, like the notorious Matabele ant from the lowveld, live in colonies numbering more than a thousand individuals. Ponerines do not have a queen but instead a dominant worker that is fertile. Remember, in all ants the workers are female but, in this case, the one that is stress-free will have certain physiological processes triggered that enable her to conceive. So, to remain the only one that is stress-free, she bullies her fellow workers constantly, never allowing their stress levels to drop to the point that they would become fertile too. A cold and crazy system, but it works. In fact, Wild Dogs are one of the mammals that do a similar thing. 

One thing all ponerines have in common is a painful sting, from the Peter's Smooth Ringbum, Streblognathis peetersi (up to 22mm long), that massive, shiny black ant we see so much of around here (second photograph), to the Matabele ants in the Lowveld (a mighty sting but still not as bad as the Streblo) to this Rugged Ringbum, who I have not yet been stung by. And I am not going to try, because I've heard that her sting is the worst of them all!

This little piggy went to market;

This little piggy stayed at home; 

This little piggy had roast beef; 

and this little piggy had none....

And where the little piggy is, that ran all the home, no one knows! Now this is a special blend of ugly and cute! Four little piglets, separated, accidently, from mommy by me and my motorbike between Morrin Pools and the Mountain Hatchery. When this age, they only have one overriding program: follow mother; follow mother; follow mother! When I saw the mother turn off the road and the babies continuing on straight, I stopped the bike, hoping they would reunite. But the piglets just ran on. Then they stopped. it's as if the program was altered to: Ignore danger and wait for mom. After riding past and getting this close-up, they ran up the hatchery road while I continued with my task. When I returned that way just ten minutes later, I found the mother on the road sniffing for tracks, just like a dog would. She was on the right track too, close to the hatchery road, so I hope she found them.

The piglets are born altricial (compare with precocial), which means they were blind and naked, and they had to spend the first two-plus weeks in a burrow, being fed and looked after by mom alone. Once their eyes had opened and they were able to run and keep up with mom, then they would leave the burrow and accompany mom on her daily routine, which is the stage I found them in here.

From here, once they gather a bit of strength, Ma will join up with the sounder (which she had left to birth, suckle, and get her piglets to this stage. On her own), which consists of her mother, sisters and or cousins and aunts, whoever still remains. The sounder breaks up and separates as it gets too big, but females know who's who in the zoo, in their relatively large home range.

The males, on the other hand, stay with their sisters after being abandoned by their mothers, as a sibling group. After they mature, the females may join with others from another home range and form a new sounder or go back to mom's sounder and carry on. The males will form a little bachelor group, usually two to four boys, related or not, and become best buddies as they leave the sibling group and enter the big, wide world, which is filled with danger and adventure. They will wrestle and wrastle with each other and establish their dominance within the group. After a year or more, the more dominant boy will become less and less social and a lot more aggressive. 

He will leave the group, the home range, and enter new ranges, his testes will grow to massive proportions, and he will become a breeding boar. Unfriendly and unliked. But he will get all the girls, if anybody likes it or not. Well, not really, because he will have to battle it out with boars with similar intent. A tuff life lies ahead of him if he wants to breed. Anyway, woe betide any predator that tries to mess with him! Big boar pigs have an extreme attitude towards enemies, and most of those enemies, including adult leopards, avoid them. 

The other boars will also become less friendly and more aggressive. And ultimately solitary, hoping the big guy dies sooner rather than later, so they have a chance to take over. They will venture into neighbouring home ranges and try their luck.

From a little piglet to a big, bad boar. Who's going to make the nursery rhyme better? 

Oh shem. This little Common Waxbill, Estrilda astrild, decided to fly through the office, instead of around it like the rest of its flock. Unfortunately for it, though, was that there was glass covering the window and so, well, he is lucky to get away with just a headache. For me, it was an opportunity to get to see one of these shy birds up close and appreciate its beauty.

Like all waxbills, the beak has a sheen that makes it appear that it is made of wax, giving the group the name. The red bill in this species is striking, together with the bright red spectacles. The "common" part of the name comes from the fact that this is the most widespread species of the group. They also gather in the largest concentrations of all the nine species occurring in the Southern African region.

Common waxbills are usually encountered in groups of about a dozen here on the estate, flying, as a group, from bush to bush, from which they jump to the ground in search of grass seeds, their staple diet as adults. They are completely sedentary, which means they remain right here throughout the year, even the coldest parts of winter. You will notice that the majority of the bird species I have featured on my publications may be sedentary, but they usually include seasonal movements to lower-lying areas. Like from here to Nelspruit during the coldest two months of the year. But these chaps will tough it out through the coldest months. Mainly because their staple diet, grass seeds, are still as easy to find in the cold as they are in the hot. Insects, on the other hand, being the staple for the majority of birds featured, are very difficult to find in the cold because they are not active and, therefore, hide away.

Although these birds are prolific, they are kept in check by a brood parasite, the Pin-tailed Whydah, featured in my blog of February 2020. The whydahs are also seed eaters that reside in large groups. After an elaborate mating ritual, the gravid female Whydah, who lays about twenty eggs per season, locates the nest of the waxbills. She then surreptitiously slips in when the parents are not around, quickly breaks open and eats the contents of one of the waxbill eggs, removes the shell and then lays her own egg as a replacement for the missing Waxbill egg, and then leaves the area having nothing further to do with her offspring. The Whydah egg hatches, and unlike many other brood parasites like cuckoos for example, the chick does not kill the remaining Waxbill chicks but grows up together with them, quickly learning how to copy the begging behavior of the Waxbill chicks. Once the chicks have fledged, the Whydah chick spends about a week with its surrogate family and then suddenly leaves and finds a flock of its own kind to stay with.

This is a photo of an African Giant Water Bug, Lethocerus cordofanus, taken by Mike Beaumont of Coch-Y-Bunddhu (unit 1), which is the perfect place to find one of these, with the beautiful weir, K32, right outside the house. This species is about sixty millimeters long while some new world species reach over one hundred and twenty millimeters, making them the largest bugs (Hemiptera order) and even match the size, but not weight, of the largest beetles.

They are voracious predators of aquatic invertebrates and even small fish and frogs. They wait, under the water's surface, in ambush for prey to approach them. They then grab the prey with their powerful forelegs, unfold their robust rostrum (sharp, piercing, hypodermic-like mouthparts), stab the victim and inject a venomous saliva that contains enzymes, and suck out the resulting liquified insides. The piercing rostrum will also be used in self-defense, so do not handle them. The bite is apparently very, very painful for up to five hours, but not of medical importance.

The roles of the sexes are also quite different from most insects with the male being sought out by the female, who then mates with him. Once she is ready to lay her eggs, the female lays them above the water line and leaves the area. The male then guards the eggs from predators and, when the eggs threaten to desiccate, he brings water and hydrates them, caring for them until they hatch. 

Is this a bee? Nope. It is a Bee Fly Hover Fly, a fly that mimics a bee, which offers a certain amount of protection. The quickest way to tell them apart is the very obvious single pair of wings in the flies as opposed to a double pair of wings in bees and all other flying insects, and the clubbed antennae that stick out the front of their faces. 

These Hover Flies from the Syrphidae family are not preferred pollinators because they are not attracted to the flowers for the nectar. Instead, they are there to mop up the pollen grains and so are, therefore, predators of flowers. although some grains still adhere to them, and they still pollinate other individual flowers as they get to them. Here you can see the fly enjoying the pollen grain adhering to the anthers of a striking St. John's Wart flower from a Curry bush, Hypericum revolutum. 

They make up for this bad behaviour though, because, like ladybird beetles, these flies also lay their eggs on plants that are infested by aphids, and the slow-moving, slug-like larvae hatch and eat these plant pests by the hundreds, so, over-all, the Syrphid fly is a gardener's friend. 

 

I was creeping through the gloomy forest vegetation in the gorge of the Upper Majubane, not too far from the waterfall, when I saw a single shaft of light beam through the canopy and land directly on a single flower of a Lydenburg Vygie, Delosperma lydenburgense, a special vygie only found in our area. It appeared as if the flower was generating the light, and as I approached it, a little butterfly, a blue of some sorts (still to be identified), alighted on the flower. Clearly, I was not the only one attracted to this sudden glow of purple in the gloom! A beautiful experience!

This is another photo sent to me by Dave DeVos from "The Croft's" (unit 19). A stunning picture of a female African Finfoot, Podica senegalensis, with her neck perfectly reflected in the water. This species is listed as vulnerable (VU) on the SANBI Red List because it has a sporadic and limited distribution and its habitat, flowing rivers with overhanging vegetation, is being destroyed by human habitation. It is a great spot for any birder because, even where it does occur, like here, it is hardly ever spotted, it is so shy and secretive.

Last season was the first time I had ever spotted chicks, two of them with mom, on the Steenkamps River near S3. I was overjoyed because the chicks even called to their mother after I had accidentally separated them, and I had never heard that sound before. Recently, when the rivers were still quite low, I got to see another mother and her two chicks cross the road in front of me at one of the crossings on the Kliprots river between Pebble Creek and Kliprots Creek (units 25 and 24). Very exciting to see them breeding comfortably on the estate! 

Oh man, the lichens in this place are mind-blowing! This is a fruiticose lichen commonly called Cartilage lichen, Ramalina celastri, and it is common in the heavily shaded riparian forests on the estate. I have said much about lichens in previous blogs and there is still much to explore. It is something I would like to get to know more about, so I have extended a dead-end path, in the forest between Pebble Creek and Kliprots Creek, that leads up into Bushpig Alley, so that it returns to the road. 

The circular route, which is only about a half a kilometer long is a pleasant promenade through thick riparian and new forest, creating dappled shade that is perfect, with our clean air, for the formation of lichen forests where, as you see above, one can find multiple species crowded amongst each other. There are also cliff faces with crustose and leprose lichens competing for space on, what would otherwise be, uninhabitable surfaces. Enquire when you see me, and I will explain the way. Or I can take you on the Lichen Trail. Just let me know.

It's the JOLLY SEASON now, so let's get out there into the mountains, the gorges, and along the rivers! There is much to see. Much to experience and many fish to catch!