Hoekwil forest

On a back road between George and Wilderness, just past a small settlement of low-cost government houses, there is a dirt road marked "Big Tree". It doesn't look very promising, but only a few hundred metres down the road, the dairy pastures and dusty stands of weeds give way to a cool green cathedral of Afrotemperate forest. On this late Sunday afternoon leaves were glowing stained glass, the streams murmured quiet prayers of thanks for last week's rain and the forest provided a silent sermon on the nature of time.

It's March again.

On the sandy floodplain south of De Hoop vlei, this Haemanthus flower is pushing up. Only later the two broad, dark green leaves will appear, flat on the ground.



It's interesting that Amaryllidaceae have recalcitrant seeds. This sounds like it means they are stubbornly resistant to growing at all. Botanically, it actually refers to seeds that are not able to dry and will germinate immediately when ripe. This explains why Amaryllids all over the world flower just before the rainy season of their native habitat. Unlike most plants, the ripe seed could not survive even a single dry season.  Here in the winter rainfall areas of the Western Cape, that usually means the many and varied Amaryllidaceae appear in early March, often pushing up out of hard, dry ground.

I'm not sure why this species is named H. sanguineus, but I'd like to think that it was presumed sanguine to be waking right at the end of summer, confident that the winter rains will be along shortly. A good word that, sanguine. One doesn't see it nearly often enough any more.

The cuteness continues: a baby tortoise

Just in case the baby sunbird wasn't heart warming enough, here's a tiny baby tortoise spotted in the garden this morning.



Juvenile Angulate Tortoise Chersina angulata (Schweigger 1812). Adults get to about  the size of a man's outstretched hand, but this one had a carapace barely 8cm long.

Just for the record, this is a free-roaming tortoise. We're a stone's throw from the fynbos of the extended Table Mountain National Park. Wild visitors are one of the huge privileges of living here, and a very good reason to leave the bottom of the garden mostly natural. It also makes for a very nice view across our wild olives and Rhus glauca thicket, which could almost convince you you're actually inside the nature reserve as long as you don't look to the right where suburbia sprawls.

Just a baby sunbird

Fledged four days ago. At first just a tiny ball of fluff, completely out of control, crashing into the ground and cheeping plaintively while its parents fluttered around frantically . It's a miracle any birds survive their first day or two out of the nest in the hungry wild. Two days later, when this photo was taken, it was starting to fly and move through the plants confidently, even exploring flowers for nectar. But it's still very much a baby. The non-stop peep-peep-peeping makes it easy to find in the garden while its parents hurry around and bring food. I was lucky that the nest was right next to my vegetable garden, so I could watch the show from the very start, and they soon got used to me being a few feet away. Father, like all male Lesser Double-collared sunbirds, is small but spectacular, with an iridescent green head and postbox red breast, separated by a narrow band of the deepest royal blue. He seemed to spend most of his time on top of the nearby Cape Honeysuckle or the fence, showing off his disco plumage and singing his heart out. You could tell when baby hatched, because suddenly mom was around again, all businesslike, backwards and forwards between collecting insects and delivering them. Maybe, baby it will hang around long enough so that I can see it's going to be a shiny boy or a sleek grey girl.

Southern Double-collared Sunbird or Lesser Double-collared Sunbird, Cinnyris chalybeus (formerly in the genus Nectarinia).

De Mond & Waenhuiskrans Nature Reserves

A lot of my work over the last couple of months has been at De Mond Nature Reserve, probably my favourite stretch of coastline anywhere (see map at end).

The Heuningnes Estuary at De Mond Nature Reserve.

Agathosma cerefolium - this buchu has hands down the best smelling foliage of any plant anywhere. Small and inconspicuous, it's hard to see when it's not flowering, but if you just brush against it, the lemony-anise scent tells you it's there. The perfume is so characteristic of the area that the coastal ridge of Agulhas National Park is named Anysberg. Buchus are the fine-leaved Cape branch of the lemon family (Rutaceae).

The neon-green foliage of another buchu, Agathosma collina is much easier to see - it's dominant on the dune fynbos in this part of the Overberg, and in full flower at the moment.

The Pink Orchid Satyrium carneum, just starting to flower now. Regionally considered Near Threatened (redlist.sanbi.org) it's actually locally common in many coastal sandy areas.

De Mond and Waenhuiskrans Nature Reserves are separated by about 5km of private land, but like anywhere else in South Africa, the beach below the high water mark is Admiralty Zone public property and makes for a delightful wild walk.

Waenhuiskrans - the wagon cave. Presumably named for its size, rather than it actual ability to shelter wagons, since it is very wet at high tide. The neighbouring town was named Waenhuiskrans before being renamed to Arniston to commemorate the ship wrecked here in 1867. 

Huge numbers of Southern Right Whales gather every year between June and November to mate,  calve and nurse their young in the shallow, warm coastal waters of the Overberg.

common terns

Oystercatchers, once in decline, are now locally abundant, and commonly seen.

View over the sea from cliffs above Waenhuiskrans

Crowned cormorant. Just before I took this photo a couple of years ago, my GPS fell into the sea. I went back at low tide just after dawn the next morning and actually found it wedged between two rocks, sadly the battery seal had failed and it was full of sea. A long bath in distilled water, then pure ethanol, brought it back to life long enough to retrieve a weeks worth of work before it died forever.

Beach at Waenhuiskrans Nature Reserve.

And for those of you who don't know the Cape well, that's where the reserves are, just along the coast from Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa.

fishing for a living

Giant Kingfisher (Megaceryle maxima) doing its thing.

Being botanically inclined, I tend to forget how damn hard it is to photograph birds, especially without long telephotos that cost as much as a luxury car. This guy helped a lot by deciding that the edge of the bridge an arm's length away from my car window was a great spot to base his morning's fishing.

Ten plunges over a half hour yielded a 60% success rate. Possibly assisted by low winter river levels, but still impressive. Only three misses and one extremely unimpressed look when a submerged root was hunted in error. I didn't realise quite how amazing it is that they just fly out of the water.

Kruger National Park

Imagine a scattering of conservation officials from all over South Africa. Yes, with two-tone khaki. Now also imagine lots of conservation planning professionals. You know, the kind of people that simultaneously worry about where to conserve representative plant and fish and everything else habitat, complex spatial modelling using GIS, and how to influence policy, law and politicians, preferably using maps. Stir in a cupful of provincial and national environment department staff, a pinch of NGO, and season with a few eccentric consultants. This is the nicest, most passionate collection of misfits and nerds you could hope to meet. Every year we get together, talk about technical innovation, triumphs, failures and strategies. And every year we go away ready for another year, feeling a bit less like we're beating our heads against a wall. Last month we gathered for four days in Kruger National Park for the ninth annual Biodiversity Planning Forum. We started at 8 every day and with workshops and meetings often running past 7 pm, ironically there was little chance to get into the reserve. Only by gettting up well before dawn and staying an extra day did I get any bush time  at all. Nothing particularly special, but since I never get tired of sleek impala, Acacia and Terminalia trees, and the scent of earth and potato bush, that's OK.