Wilkinson's World

Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

I’m always excited to come across Agamas  and lizards on our travels.  They are usually such colourful subjects to photograph, but even those that lack colour are still fascinating because of their beautiful scales, spines and armoury, which the camera captures so well!  We are lucky in Southern Africa to have such a huge variety of these little reptiles so my delight is bound to be ongoing as we come across more and more on our journeys  around the country.

Agamas are quite common in Namibia, especially in the rocky areas, although there are arboreal and terrestrial Agamas as well.  In Southern Africa there are eleven species, all quite similar in appearance but with different colours and marking.  They tend to camouflage themselves by picking up the colour of the substrate they inhabit, however when they are breeding they are brightly coloured and it is easy to distinguish between the males and females. Did you know that Agamas can change their colours much like a chameleon does, with males being able to change themselves to resemble females when they are in danger?

The diet of the Namibian Rock Agama (Agama planiceps) consists mainly of insects – predominantly ants and termites.

Females lay between 5 and 18 eggs in the middle of summer and these take about two months to hatch.   Don’t you love the ferocious mock teeth markings on her lips?  Very scary!!

Tree Agamas (Acanthocercus atricollis) usually have large blue heads and their diet consists of flying insects like grasshoppers, beetles and other goggas that inhabit the bark of trees.

Although I photographed this albino-like Agama in a tree, it’s colouring is a mystery to me and I’m not sure whether it is a rock or tree Agama.  It could be a juvenile still getting its colours, or an adult doing its chameleon camouflage trick!

In central Namibia we came across this attractive Jordans Girdled Lizard.  Girdled lizards need the warmth of the sun to raise their body temperature, so they are known as heliotherms and as a result they are diurnal.   They tend to eat anything that they can catch which means that their diet is wide and varied, even including vegetation if no insects or small invertebrates can be found.  Note how well he blends into his environment.

This Black Girdled lizard (Cordylus niger) was basking in the sun at Langebaan in the Western Cape.  Its dark colour serves the purpose of allowing it to absorb heat more effectively because it lives in an environment that has a lot of rain and mist.

Finally, I’ll end off with a magnificent specimen of an Augrabies Flat Lizard (Platysaurus broadleyi), which, as its name suggests, was found in the Augrabies Falls area in the Northern Cape.

Unlike their girdled cousins, flat lizards have smooth skin that has an almost velvet finish.  They also need the sun to initiate activity and then they spend their day searching for food, basking or interacting with other lizards.  Flat lizards tend to live on rocks as these quickly heat up bringing the lizards to their preferred temperature.

“He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: ‘Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!’”

Congratulations if you recognized that quote from the short story in “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling, a description of the heroic Rikki-Tikki-Tavi that leads a short while later to the graphic description of the little mongoose’s fight-to-the-death with Nag, the cobra. No prizes for knowing who won! Written well over a hundred years ago, the Jungle Book remains an absolute classic.

The story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is, of course, set in India, but Namibia too has an abundance of mongooses.

We are always interested to see which of our blogs attract the largest number of hits, and one of the most searched items is the humble mongoose!  This is quite surprising as a mongoose is not a  particularly exciting animal to look at, but obviously it generates a lot of interest on the Internet.

These little mammals are quite common in Namibia and we even see them in the grounds of our townhouse complex on the outskirts of Windhoek.  The most common variety in this area is the yellow mongoose, easily distinguished by its light yellowish coloured coat and the white tip on its tail.  They are very shy animals and will scurry away quickly, or duck into whatever shelter is closest, as one approaches   We often see them in pairs when we go on our walks to the nearby Avis Dam.

Further north at Etosha, in the Caprivi region and on the eastern border of Namibia the banded mongoose is more common, very similar in looks to the slender mongoose, except that it has a number of stripes on its back.

This creature, unlike its cousin the yellow mongoose, prefers woodland and riverine forest as its habitat.  It also breeds during the summer months and has between two and eight young.   The gestation period for all breeds of mongoose is approximately eight weeks.  Their diet consists of lizards, beetles, termites, birds eggs, mice and fruit.

Eggs present no real challenge.and the mongoose will often pick up the egg in its front paws and then slam it  onto a rock or onto the ground to break it open.

At the Harness Wildlife Foundation we were amused to see dozens of slender mongooses follow the voluntary helpers around at feeding time – it looked like a scene out of  the Pied Piper of Hamelin!

They are extremely sociable animals and live in groups of twenty or more.

We unfortunately don’t have photographs of yet another variety of mongoose found in Namibia, namely the black mongoose, due to it’s elusiveness and rarity.  The black mongoose is endemic to Namibia and is found mainly in the Erongo mountains.  Not much is known about this species so a number of scientists are conducting studies on the black mongoose at the moment.  We have seen them on three different occasions, which makes us feel extremely priviliged.

Encountering African wild dogs on a game drive is about as exciting as coming across a lion or a leopard.  These animals are endangered and it is a rare privilege to see them.  They travel in packs of  between six and twenty, so one is always going to see more than just a lone wild dog.

We saw our first African wild dogs at the Harness Wildlife Foundation in Namibia, an ex-cattle farm now dedicated to saving endangered wild animals.  The orphaned animals that they rescue are housed in large enclosures so they maintain the appearance of living in the wild.  All the proceeds taken from tourism are ploughed back into the project and into helping the surrounding local communities.

Excited to be able to observe them being fed, we climbed up to a lookout platform above their feeding area and were amazed by their strange behaviour when they sensed food was in the offing.  The dogs started to run around each other making strange high-pitched growling noises that sounded decidedly eerie.  Within minutes they were in a feeding frenzy and soon gulped down the food that was thrown into the enclosure.

They are formidable hunters and their strong jaws make short work of their prey.  In the wild they tend to go for the weak and sick animals.  They work as a team to down their targeted prey and never show aggression towards each other during the hunt.

No two dogs have the same markings, which makes them quite unique.  Unlike domestic dogs that have five toes, wild dogs only have four toes on each foot.  They have magnificent mottled brown, yellow and black coats and bushy tails with white tips.  Their hearing is enhanced by their large bat-like ears.

We came across a pack of wild dogs quite by chance in the Mdumu National Park in the Caprivi.  We’d had a dismal day of animal spotting and the birding wasn’t offering up much either, when we rounded a bend and saw the dogs lying quite near the road.  The excitement that this generated made up for the disappointing hours before and we left the Park later feeling like we’d hit the jackpot!

The Mdumu Park has the typical habitat for these dogs – woodland – where they are able to prey on young buck, warthogs and any other small animals, birds and rodents.

There is usually only one breeding pair in the pack.  The rest of the group consists mainly of male dogs, as females tend to leave the group in search of their own packs once they pass the nurturing phase.  Occasionally there will be a secondary breeding pair, but this is rare.  Female wild dogs give birth to between ten and sixteen pups (usually more males than females) and these are reared by all the males in the pack.

So what does a housewife ironing in Windhoek have in common with troops who fought in the Gulf War in Iraq?   Believe it or not it is the infamous camel spider.  These spiders have been known to bite soldiers in the Middle East and as a result, many myths and legends have surfaced about them.

As I said, I was busy ironing when I noticed a movement across the floor next to me.  On closer inspection I saw what looked like a ferocious cross between a spider and a scorpion.  Not being too partial to having spiders or scorpions on the loose around the house I decided to catch it and photograph it before releasing it in the bush, which I duly did with very little resistance or aggression from the arachnid in question.

The Camel Spider

Two years later I have been able to identify it as a Solifugid, also commonly known as a camel spider, wind scorpion or a sun spider.   Solifugid means ‘escaping from the sun’.  In Southern Africa it also has the name of “baardskeerder” which translated means beard cutter – apparently they have been known to cut human and animal hair to line their underground nests.  According to numerous write-ups on the internet this weird creature is greatly feared, mainly due to the many myths that abound about its terrible bite and its aggression towards humans.

I was interested to see that there are a number of websites dedicated to camel spiders – sites that perpetuate the myths and others that try and set the record straight.  Some of the rather bizarre stories circulating about these creatures are that they are lightning fast and can move at speeds of over 30 mph;  that they carry scorpions on their backs (hence the name camel spider); that they scream as they chase a person and that their bite can cause dreadful damage to human flesh.

In truth, they are much slower and move at a top speed of 10 mph, which is still pretty fast for a spider of this size.  Their venom is not poisonous to humans, but if a bite gets infected then obviously the wound will turn nasty.  They do not scream at or chase people, but they do like to keep up with one’s shadow to keep out of the sun, which may give the scary impression that they are chasing someone.  Their enormous jaws are used to kill and chew their prey, which mostly consists of insects, spiders, small rodents and lizards.

Urban legend or not, it is a rather scary-looking creature and I’m glad that my encounter with it was peaceful and didn’t end up with me getting more than just a nice photograph.

Our focus on this website is predominantly on birds and birding, but we have spent many delightful hours watching the squirrels that are found in Namibia and Botswana.  The two varieties that are prevalent here are the Cape ground squirrel (Xerus inauris), found mainly in the dry, semi-desert areas and the little tree squirrel (Paraxerus cepapi), which mostly favours woodland areas.

Cape ground squirrel

On visits to the Kgalagadi TF Park and the Central Kalahari, this year, we came across scores of the Cape ground squirrels and had to drive very carefully to our campsites because they had completely undermined the road with all their burrows.  Living in little colonies, they share the burden of keeping an eye out for predators.  They appear just as comfortable standing on their hinds legs as walking around on all fours.

Typical burrow area

Identifiable by their white stripes

We saw a banded cobra take refuge in a squirrel burrow when we stopped too close to it, but squirrels also often share their living space with mongoose and meercats.

An unwelcome visitor in a squirrel burrow

The ground squirrel’s diet is varied and apart from eating seeds, pods, insects and whatever else they can catch, they are also partial to bread and other foodstuff that generous campers offer them.   Bigger than the tree squirrel, the ground squirrel is easy to recognize as it has a white stripe down its side and an enormous bushy tail.  The tail, when lifted, serves as a sunshade.

Now guys, don't be jealous .....

The tree squirrels are shyer than their bigger cousins and tend to live in smaller groups.  We found them much more difficult to pin down for photographs until we went to Savuti in Botswana, where the little critters virtually took over our campsite and we had to hold down all our food and snacks.  They had no qualms about coming into the caravan, car and even onto an occupied chair to pinch some nuts.  We were amused at how they picked up nuts and carried them long distances to store, before coming back for more.

Here, there and everywhere

What a cutie!

The little one pictured above was brazen enough to nibble my toes before climbing up my leg and onto the chair.

At the Island Safari campsite in Maun, we were fascinated to see how the tree squirrels almost mobbed a puff adder as it slithered through the campsite.  Together with the birds they made quite a noisy fuss about the danger that this snake presented to them.