Feb Birding: Finding feathers in a furnace!

February has proven a productive birding month and in just a few days we clocked up 130 species on the basic birding course at Karongwe Game Reserve with the year-long Ecotraining students (http://www.ecotraining.co.za/). This is remarkable simply because the weather was exceptionally hot with one particularly eager thermometer clocking a 48⁰C at one point. We resorted to very early starts and much birding from the vehicle so that in between bouts of viewing we could engage the ‘manual air-conditioning solution’ that an open Land Rover provides!

Being in a vehicle also enables you to cover more habitats which house different species. The most obvious feathered feature wherever we went was the Woodlands Kingfisher. These are conspicuous birds thanks to their bright colours and noisy, active habits. The “chip-crrrrrrrrr” is unmistakeable and unrelenting but when one considers that the Woodland’s is a migrant, it is understandable that they call so incessantly. Their breeding efforts need to be wracked-stacked-and-packed before its time to move on again.

Most species of kingfisher are strictly monogamous (one male and one female pair up). The males defend territories and establish a pair bond with the female through visual displays and courtship feeding. The Woodland’s Kingfisher has a particularly elaborate display in which it opens its wings and pivoting on a branch displays the white and then the blue side of the wing alternately all the time vocalizing loudly. A female taken by his exhibitions will be further convinced to pair up with a male depending on the nuptial gifts he brings her. Some bird species (including the kingfishers) engage in courtship feeding where the male proves his ability to care for a female and her brood by bringing her morsels of food. This also serves to build up the female’s reserves before she must produce and then incubate for an egg.

The bright blue of the Woodlands kingfisher’s feathers is the result of an effect called tyndal scattering. This is where the layers of structural keratin that make up the feathers are interspersed with air spaces and reflect particular wavelengths of light to appear blue. There is no colour pigment in the feathers.

Without any colour yet just as conspicuous for its vocal habits as the Woodlands, is the fork-tailed drongo. It’s a resident species but to impress females and ward of rivals it has developed a unique technique. In a process known as mimicry, the fork-tailed drongo copies phrases of songs and sounds belonging to other species of bird much like robin-chats. The complexity of the assembled tune is suspected to be an indication of fitness to females. Males that are able to remember and knit together long sequences of phrases are considered better partners. A strong mimicked vocal signal also will intimidate rivals and convince them of the singer’s superiority.

Birds sing to advertise their territories and to attract mates and subsequently build bonds with those mates (especially if they are monogamous and only have one). Birds sing most earnestly in the morning when the air is clear and still and sound travels furthest and loudest. This is known as the ‘dawn chorus’. They also utilize the dawn chorus to remind their neighbours that in spite of a night of darkness since last they called, they are still very much in attendance of their turf. Birds call in the late afternoon again to establish ownership of an area before they sleep.

Good rain has meant that Karongwe is green, lush and somewhat overgrown. Spotting birds along the shorelines at the waterholes was difficult but the characteristic 3-syllabled whistle of the white-faced ducks betrayed their presence in the area as they were flying over in the evenings to forage. These ducks are fairly unique among ducks for their tendency to both whistle instead of quacking and also to feed at night on grass, seeds, grain and even fruit (like geese). Ducks have flat bills which are used for sieving edible particles out of the water. Many ducks up-end or dabble, partially submerging their upper bodies in order to access food below the water. The food they usually consume includes various parts of aquatic plants, insects, detritus in mud, algae, crustaceans and other invertebrates. White-faced ducks dabble for food but may also dive fully under the water to obtain something they desire.

Despite the fiery weather conditions, the birding week was productive and satisfying and I look forward to the next one when I can listen to the fiery-necked nightjar under cooler night skies!

Earthworks - The Incredible Dung Beetle

There are about 7000 species of dung beetle

described world wide of which southern Africa houses the widest variety including about 780 species from a few millimeters in size up to 5cm. In one pile of elephant dung there could potentially be 16000 dung beetles. It is thus important to take care not to drive over elephant dung.

Dung beetles are astute navigators and can detect fresh dung within seconds, having it fully colonized within minutes and completely removed within a day. Dung beetles can bury more than 1 metric ton of dung per hectare per year. In this regard they are exceptionally important ecologically being responsible for the removal of wastes to under the ground and consequently they destroy the eggs of internal parasites and reduce populations of pest species like flies. They simultaneously return nutrients to the soil and inadvertently facilitate the germination of seeds caught up in the dung they bury.

Ball-rolling dung beetles generally roll balls 50 times heavier than themselves, occasionally up to 80 times. Dung beetles may have preferences for different types of dung. Some species specifically colonise course elephant and rhino dung while others may utilize buffalo, zebra or smaller animals’ dung. Seventy two percent of all dung beetle species prefer herbivore or omnivore dung to carnivore scat.

There are four different groups of dung beetles according to what they do with the dung they collect.

The endocoprids or ‘dwellers’ remain inside the pile of dung, living and breeding in situ.

The paracoprids or ‘tunnellers’ bury dung directly underneath the pile of dung as their larval food supplies.

The telecoprids or ‘rollers’ are the species that roll balls and take the dung away from the original site to be eaten or buried elsewhere effectively reducing competition with the endo- and tele-coprids. The ball is pushed with the beetle’s hindlegs while standing on the forelegs.

The cleptocoprids steal balls from the telecoprids in which to lay their own eggs.

The most conspicuous dung beetles are the telecoprids (ball rollers). They typically roll balls of dung for different purposes.

A pair may roll a ball of dung together to eat. This is called a food ball. The male may roll a ‘nuptial ball’ for a female into a hole in which they will mate and then consume the ball together. The ‘brood ball’ is rolled as a larder for the dung beetle’s larvae. The male will roll the brood ball upon which the female will sit to lay a single egg. This she pats down into the ball with dung giving the finished ball a pear-shaped appearance. The ball is buried and the outer shell hardens to keep the insides moist. The larva, on hatching, will begin to feed on the reserves and thereafter pupates in its underground dung-walled chamber. Up to 60 eggs can be laid per female per season meaning that the male must roll 60 of these brood balls alone.

Adult dung beetles can live for two years or more but they are preyed on by a host of predators including baboons, honey badgers, civets, hornbills, owls and rollers. Robber flies and wasps may catch the smaller species. The larvae of the beetles are primarily dug out of the ground and consumed by honey badgers but civets and mongoose may also do this.

Some dung beetles are flightless due to fused elytra (wing coverings). These populations are extremely endangered as they can’t disperse easily. A particularly healthy population inhabits the Addo Elephant National Park.

Dung beetles are superbly adapted for their lifestyles. They are large and robust often with a lovely metallic sheen. They have stout front legs which are serrated and able cut through compacted dung. The front tibiae are broad and toothed and together with the flattened head are used for digging and raking together dung and patting it into a ball. The antennae are fanned and club-shaped and probably related to detecting and navigating to dung piles.

Meeting Mrs Ples

I had another unique adventure with Mark Tennant the other day (www.animalsartsandancestors.com). I went to meet the original Mrs Ples. Her remarkably intact skull now resides in a velvet cased box inside the Transvaal Museum. What a wonderful visit if a rather large step back in time!

But let’s go back a sec…who’s Mrs Ples and what’s the big deal?

At the helm of early evolutionary studies in South Africa were the likes of passionate palaeoanthropologists such as Professor Raymond Dart and Dr Robert Broom. Dart’s contentious publications were the first to propose that there was in fact a hereditary link between the ape and human. This supposition was strongly supported by Broom’s discovery of a new hominin fossil in the Sterkfontein Caves in the form of Mrs Ples - the media shortening for Plesianthropus africanus (later changed to Austrolopithecus africanus). The discovery of Mrs Ples ultimately opened the world up to the realisation that not all early hominids are direct ancestors of modern man. These men’s work was foundational in the world recognising that Gauteng’s Cradle of Humankind was paramount in the understanding of human ancestry having produced thousands of hominin fragments, hundreds of thousands of animal fossil fragments and ten thousand stone tools that cover 3 major stone-cultures. Sterkfontein is the longest ongoing excavation in the world having been dug continuously for three decades and intermittently for the previous three.

Mark took me to The Cradle a while back and it blew my mind.

The part of Gauteng that has come to be known as the Cradle of Humankind is a world-renowned heritage site due to the fact that 35% of the world’s hominin fossils have been discovered here in 12 individual sites and is characterised by 2.8 billion year old rocks. The granite, some of the most ancient rock on the planet, protects an expansive network of underground caverns amongst softer dolomite and these preserve the clues of a 3.5 million year old story.

The Cradle’s undulating grasslands with their moist valleys and wooded slopes have been ideal for hominin habitation for millennia (the period when most human evolution occurred is called the plio-pleistocene) in spite of interruptions such as climate variations and the presence of inland seas. It seems the original human-like apes at 1.3m tall first roamed here about 3 million years ago. They lived in small social groups and dodged sabre-toothed cats and prehistoric hunting hyenas. Australopithecus africanus is thought to have been the original ancestor of the Homo genus which appeared when a series of hot and cold cycles created a window for speciation about 2 million years ago.

Human evolution is complicated because it branches and is not as linear as originally thought. It seems some of the original Australopithecus africana gene line took on the traits of a more robust ape-man with a flatter face and larger teeth while another evolved into Homo habilis which had a larger brain and more carnivorous diet (and thus different lifestyle skills in terms of hunting rather than gathering) than the Australopithecines.

The clues tell us that by 1.5 million years ago Homo erectus was beginning to displace H.habilis probably due to his new found ability to tame fire for warmth and protection, flames being transported from natural sources like lightning-induced veld fires. Fireplaces in the Forum Homini rooms remind guests of this critical turning point in our evolution. Remarkably, this same tool harnessed for simple tasks such as cooking food, would eventually take mankind to the moon! From this point, humans developed quickly.

The Homo genus had a mental capacity and social organization much more advanced than his predecessors and it appears dispersed northwards to colonise Asia and then Europe. Those that remained in southern Africa developed into archaic Homo sapiens 800-200 thousand years ago. These individuals excelled in communication and language began to develop as well as expression through art and the crafting of jewellery, weapons and more advanced tools. Many controversies exist around the evolution of man and scientists have limited (not to mention petrified) evidence to work with to prove or disprove their theories.

Standing in the cool, dark space under the earth is quite unnerving. Not because its particularly claustrophobic but rather because standing there is like being inside a sacred grave site. Some of the earliest forms of life, prehistoric blue-green algae’s (known as stromatolites) have been found here. Nature’s embellished, arching ceiling and the tranquil underground lake are tomb-adornments fit for kings. The most intact australopithecine ever found is still being meticulously extracted from the rock in this cave. ‘Little Foot’s’ foot bones were found in a bag containing discarded lime-mining debris blasted some 65 years previously and painstakingly matched to the rest of the skeleton where it had come to rest, his skull resting on an outstretched arm, after falling down a vertical shaft 4 million years previously.

Game Ranger in your Backpack

Its finally here after two years of blood and sweat! "Game Ranger" is an all-in-one interpretative guide to the wildlife of the Lowveld. Check out the link to learn more and to order your copy! Its a must have for every naturalist and nature lover!

http://briza.co.za/bookstore/product_info.php?products_id=283&osCsid=415eb4044e28f3544baa043ed5ad4b87

Babe at the Beach

I have enjoyed an unexpected little holiday at the sea recently. Having finished the training course in Tsavo, things were not finalised as to ‘where to next’ so I found myself hanging out on the most gorgeous beach south of Mombasa called Tiwi Beach at a rustic little resort called Maweni Cottages. Its like a mini Caribbean. Being on the equator, the water is so warm in the ocean that sometimes it doesn't really refresh you until you get out and allow the breeze to blow on you. It’s quite hot and humid on the coast but having a private beach is what it’s all about and everytime one feels soggy, off you trot for a dip in the turquoise ocean. Its heaven!

There is a shallow reef all the way along this stretch of coast so at high tide the waves aren't very big against the sand (they break further out where the reef starts) and it’s like swimming in a peaceful rock pool. When the tide is low one can pick through the reef on foot (I say pick coz there are tonnes of urchins) and explore the pools full of little rock-pool fishies (not an area of speciality!) and bristle stars and sea cucumbers and and and.... If you head north up the beach, there is a place the locals call 'starfish village' because there are hundreds of multi-coloured starfish that become beached at low tide. I went when the tide was coming in with a mask and swam out with a fisherman to see them. It was incredible. We also saw living corals with their polyps and clams and an anemone complete with clownfish 'Nemo'! I was completely exhausted after the swim because we had to go far out and you can hardly stand for the urchins! Good exercise after not doing much for a few weeks....plus the hike down the sand back to my cottage!

If you go south down the beach, one heads towards Diani Beach...a more renowned coastal destination but more built up. I went at low tide again, along the reef and the local ‘askari’ (guard) took me to a place they call the map of Africa (its prudent to take an 'askari' for safety when exploring further a field). It’s a deep pool in the reef that holds water when the tide is out shaped like the continent and complete with Madagascar pool! Next pool up is Australia which is bigger and has two caves over it but looks nothing like Australia! Go figure. Inside the caves (which are open in places to the sky and you can see the vegetation above you and the light plays on the walls...lovely) there is a colony of bats that roost on the highest parts of the walls coz when the tide comes in that’s the only place they can hide from it. The water over the years has shaped small pot holes in the ceiling and each little bat roosts in its own 'egg-cup'! They chatter while you explore and it’s like a scene from a story book!

The gardens at Maweni are beautiful. Everything is quite tropical and so there is greenery and flowers galore and the smell of frangipani wherever you walk. There was a team of gardeners at work in the gardens when I arrived (poor guys working in the heat!) and they only just had seemed to have made headway a week down the line due to the extent of the beds! Palm trees line the banks (the camp is raised above rocky cliffs) and there are a good few Baobabs too. There's a restaurant and a pool but I prefer the self catering option and the sea!

One can get fresh fish caught that morning from the fishermen. There is a small thatched 'banda' - shelter - near the edge of the living area and the locals are allowed to come up and sell their wares. It’s really cool that this is a private beach so you don't get harassed by locals to buy things all the time like in central Mombasa. I did however get offered seashells for purchase by a fisherman while I was swimming in the sea! Anyway, the locals sell everything you could wish for at the sea....fresh fish (filleted for you on request thank goodness), lobster, crab, prawns, calamari, oysters etc. And you see them collecting it so you know it’s fresh (and they don’t harvest in excess it appears, just what is needed which it super). Then there are some veggie sellers with tomatos, ginger, garlic, fruits and potatoes so the basics are covered and one doesn't ever need to go to town really (I picked up milk and the like on the way in as well as an emergency bikini! Who'd have thought!). The coconut milk mandasi's (like a sugarless doughnut) freshly baked are my best.

The first 3 nights I was at the beach were the best. Caroline, a Dutch girl who did the Ecotraining course I just instructed (www.ecotraining.co.za), had a few days to waste before she headed home. The 2 of us teamed up to find a place to stay and then enjoyed such a lovely holiday together - fresh food (she's a great cook!), pedicures and massages from Smugglers Rest, the on-beach local salon!, long swims and walks and lots of laughs. We were like two kids at Christmas. She swears she'll be back from Amsterdam ASAP again with everyone she knows...she's fallen in love with Africa!

I adopted 2 stray cats. The first showed up while Caroline was still with me and we couldn't resist her. She's pregnant and obviously hungry so each meal we'd dish her some fish or calamari or tuna...the life of a beach cat. She makes the most bizarre squeaking mews and is too sweet. She's little, black and white with a pink nose and green eyes. This morning 'Grizabella the Glamour Cat' (I saw cats when I was home last!) had brought a tabby friend along for milk! It’s nice to have the company. Grizabella has got to curling up on the chair beside me in the evenings. It took a few days for her to get so familiar. The other climbed onto my lap immediately begging for attention...a bit more forward!

My Kenyan experience has been a brilliant adventure all round but I am looking forward to heading home to family for Christmas after some more training in the Mara (back to Koiyaki Guiding School www.koiyaki.com soon). I have a new little dress I want to wear and a great tan to show off when I get back!

Rukinga – Lifeline between East and West

Tsavo country is vast, spectacular and ochre-red. The fine red dust is its trademark - and too the red elephants and buffalo that result from it.

Rukinga Ranch is 30000ha of cattle ranch turned conservation thanks to efforts of Wildlife Works, a company that recognised that the region in which Tsavo lies isn’t going to get any wealthier from doing nothing for the land. The cows get denser each year as does the population and so the only real solution is to put the land to good use. When the majority of the space in the region is already taken up by the East and West Tsavo Parks that are already a tourist attraction thanks to history and movies like ‘Ghosts in the Darkness’, it makes sense to ensure the wildlife perpetuates. To do this takes cooperation from the community and a channel that links them together. Rukinga is such a place…a refuge for migratory animals passing through the desolate dry landscape and a paradise to the observer.

The elephants jostle and vocalise through the night to stake a claim to the small waterhole they have created from lifting the water pipe outside camp. The park staff are exasperated at having to fix the pipe for the umteenth time but I love the fact that all through the night I can hear the ellies from my bed and every morning first thing, there they are right on the doorstep vying with buffalo bulls for access to the muddy bath. Hundreds of ring-necked doves alight around the great grumpy pachyderms like grey snow falling on the red earth, the sunlight glinting off their white retrices. One needn’t venture far at all for a wildlife spectacle so incredible, it’s hard to believe it happens again and again each morning.

But after some elephant indulgence, the great expanses beyond the camp vicinity beckon and inevitably the temptation grips to look for some of the other remarkable species that inhabit these parts. There are gerenuks that never cease to elicit giggles as they stand up primate-like on their hind legs to access leaves generally out of reach of such small antelope. Their front hooves dangle out gracefully in front of their sleek bodies as they nibble and chew for seemingly ages on two pins. Fringe-earred oryx are rarer but a glimpse of their impressive stature with lance-like horns is always a treat. As is an encounter with the endangered Grevy’s zebra. The population was introduced to the area in an effort to bolster the numbers. While the oryx’s ears appear frayed and unkempt, the Grevy’s has ears that look like they used to belong to Mickey Mouse! Oversized and comical these perfectly compliment a unique stripe pattern amongst zebra that resembles a pin-stripe suit left open over the belly to reveal a white undershirt.

Aardwolf and striped hyena, caracal, serval and bat-earred fox are some of the other treats and not always that rare a sight either. But my best are the Kirk’s dikdik. These miniature antelopes are the fame of the area. Paired off in their small but excusive territories, it’s a few hundred meters only between sightings. Their large eyes are even more emphasized by the dark preorbital glands that they use to paint tarry secretions onto beacons as boundary markers. The little ungulates also make remarkably large middens to identify their ranges but as a species, being so successful warrants a little showing off I suppose. Their slender noses are apparently a clever trick they have to survive in such harsh climates, wriggling these to cause evaporate cooling.

I’ve heard a story or two of late about how the dikdik got its name but as convincing as these were, the fiction was derived from a very capable story-telling Irishman with a vivid imagination and an illuminating smile. Jimmy was one member of the first group of students to participate in Ecotraining’s pilot Kenyan 28-day field guide training course on Rukinga (www.ecotraining.co.za) and was matched in his charismatic-ness by each of the others participating. Anton, the Russian-Australian, had a ceaseless stream of naturalist questions that couldn’t be quenched (even between Ashleigh’s random hic-ups) – even at 2am on a nocturnal drive, they just kept coming! But that kind of interest is exactly what is required in an environment where there are so many new things to learn and areas to explore…not least of which was Mount Kasigau, the towering landmark that presides over the Rukinga landscape. So up we went…

The Austrian-Spanish cousins, Sophie and Cecile, and I had decided we would just accompany the over-energetic Jimmy, Anton and Wil part of the way up the 1640m peak. Climbing a mountain is about enjoying the scenery on the way up and not just anticipating the view from the top. Dry, rocky Commiphora bush changed into tall, shaded dry forest which metamorphosed into a fantasy-land of looming trees, dancing leaves, giant-sized buttrices and moss-covered logs. Trenches from the First World War distracted us from the hike at one point and then the appeal of an even lovelier wet-forest further up where purple orchids dotted the tree trunks, Taita white-eyes flitted and one had to be careful to step steadily on the slippery mud. The temperate was cool and lovely, a remarkable micro-climate compared to the heat below. Then the final climb was in sight and the girls were still on board and more determined than ever to reach the top having come so far inadvertently! The boys must’ve been as impressed with us as we were with ourselves as they quite willingly shared their sandwiches with us! We had abandoned ours in the vehicle below not thinking we’d need them! Getting down proved a comedy of slippery errors but 7 hours after it all began and we were back on level ground marvelling at the feat!

October has seen the start of the very welcome rains. ‘Karibu sana’ as they say in Kiswahili… ‘most welcome’! The entire landscape has been transformed into an emerald wonderland and although the elephants have dispersed and are no longer lingering on the camp doorstep, it’s a relief to know there’s plenty of water for them to drink. The buffalo can relax a bit too.

Or maybe not since the lion activity on Rukinga has been on the rise. Two very good-looking young males (albeit maneless) made their appearance the other morning roaring proudly to announce their arrival. After feasting on a lesser kudu, the companions settled under a leafy Commiphora to while away the hours providing super viewing for the second intake of EcoTrainers this year. The maneless lions of Tsavo are renowned although scientists still seem to be a little confused as to why they don’t grow manes. The probability is that the heat typical of the area would sap them of vital energy if they had impressive furry manes but interestingly, increased testosterone that causes baldness in human males, could be another reason. Since Tsavo lions tend to hold tenure over a territory on their own unlike the coalitions of other savanna areas, they’d need a whole lot of hormone driving them to be aggressive enough to chase off contenders and hair-loss may result! The ladies don’t seem to mind…

The rain has brought the migrants and Indi or ‘Indiana Jones’ as we affectionately call her – a local Kenyan already in the safari industry but here to learn more - is thrilled! Every referee-whistle of a Eurasian bee-eater or ‘coo-coo’ of the African cuckoo elicits gasps of delight from her. Through the many enjoyable hours of birding that we’ve done on both Rukinga and in Tsavo East (clocking up 123 species in 3 and a half weeks), she has also elicited gasps of delight from the rest of us with her ceaseless supply of snacks! In her words: ‘yum’!

Johnson is the laugh-a-minute Kenyan chap who always has a bright smile and a witty comment. He keeps Caroline on her toes questioning her about everything he spots. Caroline is our Dutch ‘singing’ friend – she has a tune for every occasion! She’s on an adventure away from rainy Holland to indulge in glorious Africa – lucky for us but maybe not for her, we’ve had a fair bit of rain during her stay! Steve and Petra complete the dynamic little group and although Steve is of Taita origin, he happily chats away to Petra in her mother tongue German providing great amusement to the rest of us.

Such is the case in any EcoTraining Kenyan field guide experience…a mix of diverse culture, personality, landscapes and wildlife. Wouldn’t miss it for the world!