FINSBURY FESTIVE SEASON 25/26

 FINSBURY FESTIVE SEASON 25/26

What a festive season it has been! In the two months from the beginning of December till the end of January, we have had an average of 396mm precipitation over the estate, with a high of 474mm in the north (Pebble Creek), and a low of 318mm falling at Patrick's gate in the west. I am sure that more has fallen in the north and east, but I was unable to check the gauges at these two locations for the final seven days of rain because I was unable, due to flood waters, to get to the locations, so I averaged the figures for the remaining locations for that period. 

That is a lot of rain! Fortunately, it fell gently, so there was minimal erosion and the run-off was not so dirty. Even with all this rain, the fishermen have been raving about some really good fishing (a couple of seven pounders were hooked!), and we have still been able to indulge in many activities in the mountain grasslands and forested gorges. 

I think I must have hiked the entire property over the season with a whole bunch of lovely families! We saw a lot of exciting wildlife, so below you will find a few of these. Enjoy.

This is a rather common moth species found in the Lowveld and Kruger National Park, but not common here on the estate at all. It is a Reticulate Bagnet Moth, Anaphe reticulata, but may be better known by the common name of their caterpillars: Processionary Worms.

I'm sure many of you have been to the Kruger Park in Autumn (particularly May) and seen long lines of green, hairy caterpillars, touching head to toe, as they cross the road in single file. These are what are referred to as Processionary worms and that is what it is, a procession to the nearest foodplant after resting up in a safe place.

This long line of worms travelling in single file resembles a larger organism to smaller predators and the slightly toxic hairs dissuade larger predators, so pretty good protection, then. The reason I say they are not common here on the estate is because I have never seen a procession here yet, although the main foodplants of the caterpillar do occur here. They are Crossberry bushes, Grewia occidentalis, and Wild Pear trees, Dombeya rotundifolia, both from the Hibiscus family. 

The pathfinder or leader of the procession establishes its direction (not sure how, but I would assume that the colony hatched on the host plant and that, when they first sought refuge for the night, they left a pheromone trail to follow on their return) and begins to move off while releasing a continuous strand of silk. The silk provides traction for the feet of the next individual in line who is also physically touching the one in front. The leader also releases a fresh path pheromone which enables others to follow if the line is disrupted. The second individual in line also releases a strand of silk and the pheromone to the one behind it which is also physically touching it. This continues till the end of the line which could be as much as six hundred individuals away!

Way into winter, the caterpillars would have completed their final instar and will be ready to pupate. They gather in a place which they feel is suitable, and construct a communal cocoon called a bagnet, with individual cocoons inside accommodating, once again, up to six hundred pupae! The final product looks like a dense silken handbag hanging in a bush.

Well into the following season, the adults emerge and the cycle continues. In West Africa, the bagnets are collected after pupation and the adults have vacated them. These are processed into fibres that are woven into yarn. The process has been happening for hundreds of years, at least, but more than likely thousands of years.

I featured this magnificent little milkweed plant in my blog of January 2022. I will feature it again with some added information. This individual resides in my rockery and was saved from certain death after baboons dislodged it from a cliff face near the Mountain Hatchery. Its most commonly used common name is Rosary Vine, with the proper name of Ceropegia linearis ssp. woodii.

Globally, this species is the most cultivated of all the species of the genus and is known by a huge assortment of common names like Hanging Milkwort, String of Hearts and a few variations of that, Heart Vine, Jacob's Beard and many more! 

The trailing stems grow from a bulb between rock surfaces and at each node, a pair of leaves, flowers or even new bulbs can grow. The heart-shaped leaves are succulent and arranged neatly in pairs and if the plant resides in a spot that offers dappled shade, marbled or variegated leaves develop, like in this specimen. The leaves develop a plain, dark green colouration in complete shade. 

The strange looking flowers are extraordinary little traps and are of a similar design throughout the genus. They have a swollen base and a long tube that has four lobes on top that join at the tip to form four windows (openings) that emit a very specific odour that attracts its small pollinators, Jackal Flies from the Millichiidae family. 

These flies are called Jackal flies because they are scavengers that feed off the leaked juices from unfortunate insects that have been captured by predators like spiders, assassin bugs and Robber flies. When an insect is attacked, it releases defensive volatiles which have a very specific scent. The flies are attracted to this scent and approach the scene and, like jackals, hang around the predator while it eats its prey and snatch bits that leak out or are discarded.

The fly is attracted by this odour thinking it is an insect in distress. Instead, it finds this strange flower. It enters the window to find maroon nectar guides that lead it down towards the tube where it suddenly gets very slippery and the fly falls down the tube into the swollen chamber where the fused anthers and stigma reside with the nectar and pollinia (bags of pollen). The tube is filled with stiff down-facing hairs that allow the fly to fall down, but do not allow the fly to climb up again. This imprisons the fly for six to twelve hours in the chamber. At the base of the chamber are very precisely positioned patches of nectar which forces the fly to position its body in the correct way as to firmly clip the pollinia onto its mouthparts. 

There is sufficient nectar in the nectary to ensure the fly's comfortable survival until the flower droops to the horizontal or more, the stiff hairs relax, and the fly is allowed to exit its temporary prison and fly off in search of a real source of food!

The pollinarium clipped to the mouthparts are extremely uncomfortable for the fly, and so it usually spends some time trying to groom the things off, but they are firmly clipped there. This grooming process is important because it usually turns the pollen bags inside out, so that the cleft which attaches to the guide rail in the following flower is exposed. This ensures that the cleft does not attach to the guide rail of the original flower, avoiding cross-pollination while the fly is incarcerated and stumbling around searching for a way out.

If the poor fly finds another flower instead of a real source of food through this incredible deception by the Rosary Vine, it will inevitably slip down into the flower tube again and attempt to access the small patches of nectar the flower so deviously offers so as to position its body so that it connects with the guide rail which collects the pollinarium with glee! 

Wow! What an elaborate design. After successful pollination, the ovary develops into a follicle, a double horn-shaped seed pod that splits horizontally and exposes many flat seeds with long hairs attached. The change in the moisture in the air around the seeds when the follicle splits, causes the hairs to begin to spread open to form a parachute for the seeds that are then dispersed by the wind. These seeds are characteristic of the Milkweed family, the Apocynaceae. What a crazy little succulent! 

Ceropegia: keros = (greek) wax; pege = (greek) fountain, referring to the flower that resembles a wax fountain.

Diachea leucopodia - White-footed Slime

Stemonitis splendens - Chocolate Tube Slime

Five years ago, in December twenty-twenty, I discovered my first Slime mould on the estate. With this discovery, I proudly added an entirely new KINGDOM to our Finsbury biodiversity list, the Protozoa, single-celled organisms, of which the amoeba you studied in biology class belongs, together with numerous others and these slime moulds.

Let me quickly give you a reminder of how taxonomy in the natural world works, and you will appreciate what a milestone a new Kingdom was for me:

Biological Taxonomy is the classification of all living organisms into taxa (singular taxon), showing their relationship with other organisms. It consists of eight main taxa, from the vaguest to the most specific. As an example I will use an iconic Finsbury animal we all know: The LEOPARD, and show you how it is classified taxonomically:

Domain: ARCHAEA - This taxon includes all living organisms except for bacterium, which are grouped in their own domain.

Kingdom: ANIMALIA - This taxon includes all eukaryotes that can move around in search of food. On the estate, I have found representatives for the kingdoms Protozoa (single-celled organisms like these Slime Moulds); Animalia; Plantae; and Fungi.

Phylum: CHORDATA - All animals that share a nerve chord. Other phyla in the animalia kingdom include Annelida (earthworms and co.), Mollusca (snails and slugs), Arthropoda (insects, ticks, spiders, mites, scorpions, crabs, millipedes etcetera).

Class: MAMMALIA - All chordates that nurse their babies with milk from mammary glands. Other classes in the Chordata phylum include Amphibia (frogs and toads), Reptilia (snakes, lizards and tortoises), and Aves (birds).

Order: CARNIVORA - All animals exhibiting the carnassial sheer, premolar teeth with cutting edges enabling the animal to cut through meat like a scissors. Other orders in the class mammalia include the Artiodactyla (antelope, pigs, giraffes), Perissodactyla (zebras and rhinos), Rodentia (rats, mice and porcupines), Chiroptera (bats), Lagomorpha (rabbits and hares), etcetera.

Family: FELIDAE - All cats. Other families in the Carnivora class include Canidae (dogs), Viverridae (genets and civets), Mustelidae (honey badgers, otters and co.), Hyaenidae (hyaenas and aardwolf) and Herpestidae (Mongooses).

Genus: PANTHERA - All the cats that have an elastic ligament attaching their oesophagus to the skeleton, allowing the throat to vibrate, creating a deep growl when required. Other genera in the Felidae family include Leptailurus (servals), Felis (wild cats and the domestic cat), Acinonyx (cheetahs) and Caracal (caracals). 

Species: PARDUS - Leopard and all its subspecies. Other species in the genus Panthera are lions (Panthera leo), jaguars (Panthera onca), tigers (Panthera tigris) and the snow leopard (Panthera uncia).

So far, I have identified seven different species of slime mould on the estate, including these two new ones! 

This is a description of the standard slime mould life cycle:

A single spore finds itself in a suitable environment, it germinates a few flagellated (have a tail for movement) protoplasts called Swarm Cells (not to be confused with a bee hive). These cells move around their environment eating bacteria and other microorganisms.

When they meet up with a potential mate they form a zygote and grow into a plasmodia as they split nuclei. A plasmodia is defined as a living structure of cytoplasm that contains many nuclei, instead of individual cells each with a nucleus. This plasmodia, which resembles slime or foam, feeds on more bacteria and other microorganisms and grows in size as other zygotes "swarm" to join and become an interconnected network of protoplasmic strands, with each strand's cytoplasmic contents streaming back and forth within itself. 

When this mass of single-celled organisms, that now behave like a multi-cellular organism, wants to move, the strand's contents stream in the required direction while protoplasm is withdrawn from the rear, allowing it to move at a top speed of about one millimetre per hour, leaving a snail trail behind. 

When food becomes scarce, the slime mould's behaviour becomes more fungus like and dries, forming a crust to which the nuclei migrate from within the cytoplasmic mass. This crust forms fungus-like fruiting bodies (both photos above), resembling minute mushrooms, that produce millions of spores that are released into the air, and the cycle continues. 

What a beauty! This is a Mole Snake, Pseudaspis cana, and it is a very big snake. This individual was almost one-and-a-half meters long and five centimetres thick at its thickest part! And that is not fat, it's muscle, lots of it. I know this because the snake lunged at me, lifting and throwing its thick body straight at me! This photo was taken moments before it lunged, and it didn't allow me to take further shots. Very aggressive indeed.

They are daytime active, non-venomous, and are equipped with very sharp teeth to help subdue rodents in their burrows. The juveniles are spotted and blotched and colourful, while the adults are plain-coloured. They occur throughout the southern half of Africa, and in the south of their range, are shiny black, in Mpumalanga and Limpopo they are the colour of the one in the photo. Further north they become greyer in colour.

 They spend a lot of time in animal burrows, seeking refuge in them when they are inactive, and searching them for food when hunting. Their main food are molerats (see blog of July 2020), who establish large burrow systems to accommodate their colonies. The snake can sometimes be found with half of its body protruding from a molehill, where the other half is inside the molerat's tunnel, waiting for the molerat to come along the passage. 

Now, if you check the blog from July 2020, you will see that the molerat has enormous incisor teeth that are used to dig its burrows. These teeth are dangerous to the snake, so I think the scars that are clearly visible on the top of the head of the snake in the picture may have been caused by a molerat retaliating to being eaten. Male Mole Snakes are also renowned for fighting aggressively during the breeding season (around October), and often inflict major wounds on each other, so if the snake in the photo is a male, that could also be the cause of the scarring on the head.

These snakes also capture and eat any other rodents, while the juveniles prefer reptiles, particularly lizards. Because of this, juveniles frequent rocky places while adults frequent the soft grasslands. The adults are also well-known egg eaters, particularly those of penguins on the west coast and the eggs of the Karoo Prinia in the Karoo, which are robbed from the nest. This is interesting, because egg-eater snakes have special adaptions that allow them to eat eggs, crush the shells, which are then separated from the contents and discarded while the contents are swallowed. The mole snake simply swallows the eggs whole!

The Mole Snake is also viviparous, which means it gives birth to live young, and it is one of only seven snakes on the planet that can have as much as one hundred babies at a time! The record holder is a puff adder that gave birth to 157 babies in a sitting! The other Southern African snakes in this group are the Mole Snake and the African python, who unlike the puffie and mole snake, lay eggs.

Finally, since the mole snake is diurnal, it spends its nights in the deserted burrows of other animals, its enemy while in its burrow would be Honey Badgers who like to dig for their subterranean prey items. In the day, only large raptors and land predators would be a threat to such a large, aggressive snake. 

I have featured cicada bugs before in my blogs of Springtime 2024, where I featured an unknown species emerging from its exuviae (final instar skin that is shed above the ground), and Autumn 2022 where I featured an empty exuviae of an unknown species.

This is a Cicada bug that I photographed some time ago but have finally managed to identify! It is a Hairy Orange-wing Cicada, Platypleura hirta, and, like most cicadas, it is very specific about which trees it sucks its juices from. 

This is the species we will encounter in the open grasslands sucking juices from our Silvery Sugarbushes, Protea roupelliae (the same protea that the Guerney's Sugarbird associates with). In forested areas, they associate with another tree from the same family, the African Beechwood, Faurea saligna, so if you see a cicada (or hear) on any of these two trees, it will be of this species.

This is a life history description I have given before in those blogs:

Cicadas are best known to us by the loud, high-pitched, incessant buzzing sound that the males produce to attract the attention of a potential mate. The females hear this with their tympanal organs which pick-up and analyse sounds, particularly the mating buzz of the males. The males also have these hearing organs but must disconnect them when calling because the sound he produces can reach, in some species, one hundred and twenty decibels (a gunshot is around 130db) and that would damage his own hearing.

If you manage to catch one of these bugs and turn it on its back, it is easy to distinguish between male and females: The female will have a sharp, scythe-like appendage (ovipositor) at the tip of her abdomen while the male will not. Instead, he will have two semi circular plates at the rear underside of his abdomen which cover his sound-producing organs. Both sexes' "ears" are situated here in the abdomen too. The sound-producing organ of the male are, in effect, two separate membranes supported by powerful muscles that vibrate and "pop" the membranes up and down, very much the same as you pressing the bottom of a tin in and out. Most of the remainder of the male's abdomen is hollow which helps amplify the sound. The hollow cavity in the males' abdomen also has folded membranes on each side that can be unfolded and re-folded to adjust the volume of the sound produced and when the bug calls it constantly adjusts the volume and this helps to create a ventriloquist type of scenario where it is difficult for predators (and curious human beings) to pin-point the insect.

Once the female responds to the mating call and mating is complete, she will cut a slit into the bark of a branch or twig and lay an egg within, repeating this process until she has laid all her eggs. After about six weeks, the nymphs hatch from the egg and drop onto the floor and immediately burrow into the ground with their powerful, folding forelimbs. They dig down until they encounter the roots of a plant and then create a little chamber in which they will reside while they puncture the root and the xylem within with their rigid proboscis and suck the juices out. The xylem is the vascular pathway that transports water and minerals from the roots to the rest of the plant.

These Cicada nymphs will reside underground, burrowing from root to root, until they are fully developed. Most species are referred to as "annual cicadas" and their nymphs will spend from two to nine years feeding like this underground before they are fully developed and ready to transform into an adult. But at least two species in North America (and more than likely in Africa too) are referred to as "periodic cicadas" and they synchronise their breeding and egg-laying activities so that the nymphs emerge thirteen and seventeen years later respectively en masse! This strategy is employed to increase the survival rate of the insect by flooding the "market" with youngsters so that, even with a high predation rate, the survival rate will be adequate for the species' survival. Also, it reduces the chances of a specialised predator from evolving because the long time frame between the emergence of the generations is longer than most insect will live, forcing them to find other prey species. 

Periodic cicadas or not, when the nymph emerges from underground, it climbs up the base of a tree trunk and secures itself there with its powerful forelegs and rests. After a while, the skin on the back of the nymph splits open and the adult slowly emerges, wings and all. Adults retain productive mouthparts and, instead of feeding underground from the roots of a plant, they puncture the stem of the plant above ground and suck the juices from there. The big rounded "nose", easily visible on the nymph and the adult, houses the pumping muscles that suck the fluids from the host plant. If one manages to find a bunch of these insects together on a branch of a tree, one can safely deduce that it comprises a mixed sex grouping at a feeding site.     

We were hiking north of Goudkoppies when we flushed a Cape Longclaw, Macronyx capensis, from a small clump of long grass in a field of shorter grasses. Cape Longclaws are one of the more common birds found in our open grasslands, where the nasal cat-like meeow is a regular sound. We approached the spot where the bird was flushed from and found this beautifully constructed nest on the floor between two tufts of long grass, with the long leaves of the grass bent over, covering the nest from above.

Longclaws are a small genus of birds that are closely related to pipits, with the major difference being the presence of a very long claw on the "thumbs" of the feet. When the foot is opened the foot and claw measure more than seventy millimetres in length, that's more than a third of the bird's bodies' full length! This long claw is supposed to be an adaption for walking on the top of grass tufts, like someone wearing snowshoes in the snow. Strangely, though, Longclaws do not usually walk on the tops of grass tufts, they normal walk on the ground beneath the grass sward in search of arthropod prey!

A monogamous pair establish a bond that persists for as long as they are both alive. They then establish a territory in open grassland, which the male advertises with songs from a perch and singing while performing a simple advertisement flight by combining a fluttering flight with song before dropping abruptly into the grass. If an intruding longclaw enters his territory, the male will attack, and believe me, I have witnessed a pair of closely related Yellow-throated Longclaws fighting near Ship Mountain in the Kruger Park, they fight very violently.

On that occasion, I stopped our game drive vehicle beside a pair that were fighting while, what looked like a female, watched on. They paid no attention to the huge vehicle that stopped right beside them, because they were so intent on killing each other. There was blood and feathers all over the place and on both participants! We landed up leaving due to time constraints before the outcome was reached, but I'm sure they were both badly injured afterwards. I hope she was worth it!

Once they have mated, the male accompanies the female while she gathers nest material and constructs the nest as in the photograph, and then she lays two or three eggs within. She incubates the eggs for a fortnight while the male brings her meals of insects to sustain her.

Once the chicks hatch, both sexes feed them for a further fortnight before they are ready to leave the nest for the first time. This is when the kids learn to fly while they accompany their parents for a few weeks while the parents teach them what to eat and how to gather what they eat.

They mostly forage on the ground by scraping termite colony tunnels and exposing them, chasing down beetles and other ground dwellers, and sometimes by perching on the edge of a branch and hawking flying insects. They also sometimes eat green grass seeds which they prune from the upright inflorescences.

All the literature I have read through regarding the Transvaal Dwarf Chameleon, Bradypodion transvaalense, suggests that it is beholden to the small pockets of forest in our grasslands. And indeed, I have always found them in those forests or, at least, in the forest edges or riparian bush along the rivers.

This chap, on the other hand, was encountered in the relatively short, open grasslands high up in our neighbouring Emoyeni property. Not even a small tree within sight in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree radius! If it was looking for a forest, it was very lost! It did, however, appear quite content, so I think its presence in a treeless environment was by intent.

These odd reptiles are an African thing, only occurring naturally on this continent and her islands, with half of all species restricted to Madagascar alone. There is one species indigenous to southern Europe and a few species in south-western Asia, all obviously radiating out of Africa.

There are five features that sets these unique reptiles apart from all other lizards: The ability to change colour which helps hide them from predators and from their prey; the arrangement of digits on the hands and feet opposite to each other (zygodactyl), enabling them to cling tightly to branches and twigs; Their remarkable ability to focus each eye in a different direction, an ability which is still not entirely understood; the presence of a prehensile tail (a tale that can grab hold of things), enabling them to climb more efficiently; and, of course, their long, sticky tongue that can shoot out of its mouth and entrap prey as far away as the full length of the chameleon's body!

This is a Leafcutter Bee from the Megachile genus of typical bees. They are called leafcutter bees because they cut leaves up into flat sheets that they use to construct the walls of the chambers they build in an existing hole in wood. Those "Wasp Hotels", a block of wood with numerous different diameter holes drilled into it that you hang in your garden, are designed for these bees and their relatives.

These bees collect pollen just like honeybees do, except the main differences are that these bees are solitary and that these bees do not make honey as a source of energy during the winter.

Firstly, the female bee finds a suitable existing hole in the surface of a log or twig or any other object. She then flies to a nearby tree and lands on the flat surface of a leaf. She then cuts the leaf around herself so that she leaves a neat hole in the leaf. She uses the neatly cut leaf disk to line the inside of the hole she has identified.

She then divides this lined hole into separate sections, separated by folded green leaves, creating cells which are stacked one after the other over the entire length of the hollow passage. Each cell is stuffed with pollen, an egg is laid within, and the cell is sealed off from the following one.

After a suitable time, the egg hatches and the larva (maggot) emerges and eats the pollen, moults a few times, and then spins a silken cocoon around itself within its cell and pupates. The adult emerges usually in the following season, and the males go in search of a female and, after mating, promptly die. The females remain alive long enough to build the cells to nourish their offspring. And so the cycle continues...

This is another special type of bee that I encountered on one of my hikes during December. It is a White-barred Cuckoo Bee, Thyreus delumbatus. Another common name for the bee is Curved Cloak-and-dagger Bee. Both names indicate that this bee is deceptive in some or other manner. 

And it sure is: It is a parasite of the Megachile Leafcutter bee that I have just featured before this! This bee even resembles its host, as you can see, which helps it sneak around its host relatively undetected.

The Cuckoo bee finds a female Leafcutter bee and follows her at a discrete distance until it discovers where the Leafcutter is preparing cells for its offspring. She waits till the Leafcutter is gone off to collect more pollen which she is busy stuffing into one of her cells. The Cuckoo bee enters the chamber and lays an egg within, before the Leafcutter lays her egg. The Cuckoo bee then exits and hides nearby until the Leafcutter has moved on to her next cell and the activity is repeated until the Leafcutter is finished.

The Cuckoo bee's larvae hatch before the larva of the Leafcutter and eat all the pollen. When the larva of the Leafcutter bee hatches, it is confronted by a monster instead of tasty pollen! The larva of the Cuckoo bee then eats the Leafcutter larva too!!! Not a nice world out there if one is an insect, that's for sure!

If one notices that a green part of a plant is wilting, it is often worthwhile to approach the plant to see why. In this case, the wilted section of plant was infested with aphids, the bugs that suck the juices from the plant. When I approached this particular plant, I found the aphids were being attended to by Hairy Sugar ants, Camponotus niveosetosus, while they solicited honeydew from the aphids.

I mentioned some amazing facts about the fecundity of aphids in my July 2019 blog, adding how important their enemies were in keeping their numbers down. The aphids though, are certainly not taking things lying down and actively employ guards to protect themselves when the opportunity presents itself.

In this case the aphids attract ants with a sweet excretion called honeydew, which is the still-nutritious waste of the copious amounts of plant sap that they consume. These big, aggressive ants become protective of the sapsuckers and defend them against enemies like Ladybirds, their larva and others (like Lacewing larvae).

 

And on the very last day of January, I conducted one of those bird walks where there are literally zero birds, and, while staring forlornly up, for non-existent birds, in the Steenkamps' forest, I noticed this most delicate string of flowers hanging from the branch of one of the forest trees. It is a new species of orchid for our Finsbury list and is called a Common Summer Tree Orchid, Mystacidium flannaganii. 

In my "Winter 2023" bog I featured a close relative of this, M. gracile, which resembles this as well, although its flowers are bigger and less numerous. I initially thought this was the same species but was puzzled by the flowering time, because M. gracile flowers at the end of winter, while this one flowers in mid-summer.

Check that blog out to get an idea of the pollination of the plant, which is affected by Settling Moths during the night. The flower begins producing nectar, in those elongated spurs, just after sundown until just before sunrise. The resultant odour attracts these moths who rest on the tiny flower and dip their extremely long, straw-like mouthparts into the spur to extract the nectar, collecting pollen at the same time to deposit on the following flower.

I had to return later with a ladder from the workshop to enable me to reach the plant and photograph it, allowing me to identify it, and as is expected in the crazy rules of life, I spotted a male and female African Finfoot in S6 on the way, birds that I would have given a left leg for the day before! 

That's it for the festive season! It was fun, fun and more fun. See you soon...