Wilkinson's World

We set up camp on Friday evening and soon had a roaring fire going for our braai.  The campsite is nicely laid out with place for several tents and it has a big covered boma with a large concrete table and chairs.  It would be suitable for a big party of campers.  The ablution block is clean and supported by a ‘donkey’ – a system whereby the water is heated by a wood-burning stove.

We’re always keen to meet the local ‘residents’ of each campsite that we visit, and at Teufelsbach it was a family of red-billed francolins that woke us each morning, accompanied by a pair of  screeching Ruppell’s parrots that frequented the gnarled old camelthorn tree overhanging the campsite.

There are a number of dams on the farm that are home to a variety of birdlife.  It was nice to see that the dams actually had water in them, which isn’t always the case when the rains aren’t as abundant as they have been this summer.  In fact, the rains had made the countryside really lush and green.  The veld was covered in waving grasses and wildflowers in hues of yellow, purple and white.

Walking on the farm was not without peril, as the paths and roadways were liberally punctuated by spider webs.  They were strung from virtually every shrub and even stretched across the roads that were three or more meters wide.  We had to be careful to duck under them or risk being covered in sticky webs and scary-looking spiders!

The birdlife didn’t disappoint and we spent a number of hours chasing an elusive Great spotted cuckoo down a riverbed; the cuckoo remaining tantalizingly out of our reach.  Aahh the joy when it eventually settled for just long enough to get a photograph!

Our weekends away are always full and interesting.  It was great to have found a campsite so close to Windhoek, as it isn’t always easy to take enough time off to travel great distances to go camping.  Teufelsbach is definitely conveniently close enough for many more visits.  As a nice farewell present, when we were leaving the farm, we came across this beautiful Abdim’s stork just outside the farm gate!

A near endemic to the southern African region, the Lark-like bunting is fairly common in the drier western part of the region where it favours dry shrublands, grasslands and dry watercourses.  It is a gregarious bird often found in large flocks, quite commonly in the company of sparrowlarks or canaries.  Because of its predilection for the drier parts of the country, it may travel long distances in search of water as it drinks frequently.

The Lark-like bunting feeds mainly on the seeds of shrubs and grasses, and on insects for which it usually forages on open ground.  Its song is somewhat like that of a canary, although it can be quite monotonous and repetitive.

Lark-like buntings are monogamous and build a shallow cup-shaped nest of twigs and lined with grass, usually tucked away behind a rock or a clump of grass.  The female lays a clutch of two to four eggs that hatch after an incubation period of about twelve days.

The scientific name of the Lark-like bunting is Emberiza impetuani; Emberiza from the Greek for a bunting, and impetuani possibly originating from the Tswana language, but the meaning of which is not clear.

 

So what are lichens?  Well, technically they are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an alga.  They grow in some of the most hostile environments in the world, such as in the cold of the Arctic tundra and in the heat of the Skeleton Coast desert.  In these extreme conditions they may be the only plant life present.  Just how tough these plants are was demonstrated in 2005 when two species of lichen were sent into space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.  The capsules in which they were packed were opened and the lichens exposed to the vacuum and extreme temperatures of space for 15 days.  On their return to Earth they were found to have suffered no discernable damage whatsoever!

In the lichen fields that we visited on the Skeleton Coast the lichens are found mainly on the bare stones and pebbles that lie there in abundance, but also on the exposed ground.  This makes them extremely vulnerable to disturbance by vehicles moving through the area and the damage caused is quite obvious where vehicle tracks are found.

The cells of the algae are capable of photosynthesis, as are the cells of green plants, and convert the carbon dioxide from the air into carbon sugars that feed both the algae and the fungi.  Both the symbionts are able to extract water from the mist rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean, and the fungi help in protecting the algae by retaining the water.  It is interestng that in this environment neither the algae nor the fungus can exist without its partner.

The shape that is adopted by the lichens varies quite considerably, some looking like small leafy plants (called foliose) and others looking like hard crusts (called crustose) or collections of filaments (called filamentous).

The word algae (singular alga) is derived from the Latin “alga” meaning “sea-weed”; fungi (singular fungus) is derived from the Latin “fungus” meaning a mushroom.

 

The male Great sparrows are slightly larger than the females, and the sexes also differ slightly in their plumage.  They feed mainly on seeds and also on insects which they gather while hopping about on the ground or from the foliage of trees and bushes.  They are near endemic to the southern African region.

I’m not sure if Great sparrows are particularly vain birds or if it is pure co-incidence that on several occasions while out camping we have found both males and females of the species pecking at their reflections, sometimes seen in a shiny kettle, or in the rear-view mirrors of our car.  At the campsite at Palmwage one female was so peristent in the pecking of her likeness that we eventually covered the mirrors to gain respite from the tapping!

The Great sparrow is monogamous and builds an untidy nest, a hollow ball of grass with a side entrance, usually placed in a thorn tree.  The female lays a clutch of two to four eggs that hatch after an incubation period of approximately 15 days.  It is sometimes parasitized by the Diderick cuckoo (Chrysococcyx caprius).

The scientific binomial for the Great sparrow is Passer motitensis; Passer from the Latin for a sparrow and motitensis from the Latin for Motito, the locality where the type specimen was found.  There is a town by this name in South Africa, located north-west of Kuruman, which falls into the range of the Great sparrow but I’m not sure if this is the area referred to in the bird’s sobriquet.

 

During one of his excursions we nipped across the river to see the object of his attentions.  As we suspected, we found that his mate was walled up into a nest in a hollow section of the tree trunk.

The opening to the nest, just a narrow vertical slit through which the male could pass food to the female, was about one-and-a-half metres above the ground and although we didn’t want to interfere with the process by getting too close, we thought that we could see movement in the dark interior of the nest.

The male was tireless in his efforts to provide food and we wondered if there were fledglings in the nest, or if a very hungry female was still incubating the eggs.  We watched the male taking lizards or geckos to the nest, and in the early morning when there was a collection of grasshoppers enjoying the sun on the wall of the camp ablution block, he made several trips between this spot and the nest to make the most of the bonanza.  Although hornbills are largely fruit eaters, the male was clearly not averse to feeding his mate (and possibly her brood) on lizards and grasshoppers during this period.  His hunting prowess was admirable, and the trips were completed very quickly.

Southern yellow-billed hornbills are monogamous birds, and, like the example described above, often nest in hollow trees, closing the female into the nest with a wall of mud mixed with their own faeces, for the duration of the incubation period.  The female lays a clutch of three or four eggs a few days after being walled in, and these take approximately 24 days to hatch.  The chicks are not ready to leave the nest for another 45 days or so, although the female will break out of the nest before this as the nest becomes too crowded.  During the time the femle is inside the sealed cavity, she will undergo a complete simultaneous moult, perhaps triggered by the darkness of her nest, and this is in contrast to the sequential moult of males and non-breeding females.

Unfortunately we didn’t stay at Palmwag long enough to find out the outcome of this breeding episode, but we were certainly impressed with the efforts that the male hornbill put into providing for his family.