For the identification of insects and other fauna and flora of South Africa.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Another winter garden walk

Today there is an icy wind blowing and the temps are round about 15 deg F (8 C), although if you happen to get into a sheltered spot, it is lovely and warm. I was wanting to go on a walk, but delayed it hoping that the wind would die down, however, by 10am I decided to go on a short walk as this did not seems to be happening.

Not much is stirring out there, a few of the same butterflies and robbers I have seen before. Over the past week or so, I have noticed that the male Weavers are starting to get their breeding colors although it is early in the season. Starting on my walk, I noticed one f them starting to build a nest.
And this pretty wild flower was getting some new buds.
Someone must have been collecting honey out of this old apiary at some time, but the bees are still busily collecting pollen and I am sure there must be honey all over the place by now although I did not venture too near. LOL!!
I decided to head for the concrete dam which holds rainwater to see if anything was attracted to it and almost stepped on this tiny frog. He looked frozen and just sat there and let me take his picture. He is about 3 inches in body length.
I started to move away as there was nothing else there when I spotted a wasp-type thingy flying low on the ground and went to look where he landed. As I got near my eye caught another movement and there was this tiny, 1 inch, stick mantis. Naturally after taking these, the wasp-thingy had disappeared. LOL!!

The roses are already starting to shoot out new buds, so maybe nature is trying to tell me it is getting warmer.

These new leaves were already covered with aphids.
Then it was back home, stopping along the way to take a picture of another wild flower which looked so pretty with the different colors in the leaves.
I guess that the morel of this story is that even though it is mid winter and one thinks that nothing is happening out there in the cold, nature still takes its course and if you really look, there is always something new to take photographs of.

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