Owl Fly (Melambrotus)

You talk about a learning curve?? I am coming across things I have never heard of before let alone seen!! LOL!! I must admit, I am enjoying every moment of it, but it sure is taxing these little old grey cells of mine. :)

I found this Owl Fly (ascalaphidae sp. melambrotus) tucked away inside a succulent. It is medium size (about 2 inches) from the top his head to the tip of his thorax.

Pearl-spotted Emperor (Charaxes jahlusa rex)

 These butterflies are found year-round in the gardens.

Interesting facts about bees - Part 2

Queen bees
The queen is the only sexually developed female in the hive.
The queen mates in flight with approximately 18 drones.
She only mates once in her lifetime.
A queen can lay 3,000 eggs in a day.
Queens can live for up to 2 years.
A queen can lay her weight in eggs in one day and 200,000 eggs in a year.
Fertilized eggs will become female offspring, while unfertilized eggs will become males.

Sunrise - Sunset

Africa at its best......

African Common White (Belenois cerona severina)

Males have a wingspan of 40-45mm. They are found mainly along the east coast and northern regions.

Male top of wing

Male wing below

Female

Robber Fly (Microstylum)

Family Asilidae

These are large Robber Flies, about 2-4m in length with black marks on top of the last 2 segments of the abdomen. They mostly feed on beetles and grasshoppers but as all Robber Flies, are cannibalistic.

Thanks to Jason for the identification and info from FGISA.

Interesting facts about bees - Part 1

Honey bees' wings beat 11,400 times per minute.

Bees' flight speed averages only 15 miles per hour.

Bees possess five eyes.

Honeybees can perceive movements that are separated by 1/300th of a second. Humans can only sense movements separated by 1/50th of a second. Were a bee to enter a cinema, it would be able to differentiate each individual movie frame being projected.

 Bees cannot recognize the color red.

Honeybees' stingers have a barb which anchors the stinger in the victim's body. The bee leaves its stinger and venom pouch behind and soon dies from abdominal rupture.

Africanized Honey Bees (killer bees) will pursue an enemy 1/4 mile or more.

Honeybees communicate with one another by "dancing" so as to give the direction and distance of flowers.

A single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees.

Dumpy Longhorn (Tetradia lophoptera)

Family Cerambycidae

 These beetles are of medium size and found mostly in the northern and eastern areas of SA.

 As with most Longhorns, they bore into trees and timber.

Crowned Crane

The Grey-Crowned Crane - Balearica regulorum
The claim to fame of the Grey-Crowned Crane is that it is one of the only cranes to roost in trees and the most primitive crane – it is thought to resemble the many pre-Pliocene fossils from North America and central Asia. "The first crane-like birds, which appeared in the age of dinosaurs, were somewhat similar in body dimensions to a modern crowned crane or its smaller and more aquatic relative, the limpkin" (Matthiessen 2003).
The Grey-Crowned Crane is globally restricted to Africa where the South African population, and the populations of Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia, make up the smaller population of the two subspecies. They require a mixture of wetlands and grasslands for summer breeding and foraging although they are increasingly found in man-modified habitats (agricultural lands). The overriding conservation challenge is therefore to develop sustainable management alternatives for their co-existence with agriculture on privately-owned land. This species faces widespread degradation of its breeding and feeding habitats and is still persecuted by landowners in some areas – who think that the bird is eating crops whereas they are more likely to be eating insects on those crops (McCann 2002). Over the past two decades, Grey-Crowned Crane numbers have declined by about 15% due to increased human-induced impacts.

Grey-Crowned Cranes nest within or on the edges of wetlands where they build a strong nest from the tall wetland plants, cleverly concealed from predators and the prying eyes of people. They like to forage in open grasslands adjacent to wetlands where they eat grass seeds, insects and other invertebrates – they have also taken to agricultural lands including pastures, fallow fields, maize crops, cabbages and harvested croplands. This generalist feeding strategy has allowed this species to adapt to human settlement better than the Wattled or Blue Cranes and it is regularly now found in this transformed habitat. Unlike other crane species, this crane roosts in trees – its voice has considerable harmonic development and can be heard for miles – cranes use many different calls to communicate and can be very boisterous upon returning to the roost (Cooley 1993). Non-migratory, they do move around locally and in the winter months, large flocks of non-breeding Grey-Crowned Cranes can be found dancing and calling before the onset of the summer breeding period. Intensification of agriculture, tourism development and industrialisation are threatening grasslands at a terrifying rate and indigenous species like cranes are being forced into smaller territories. Wetlands also are alarmingly threatened by human impacts and forcing the Grey-Crowned Crane into populated areas where danger lurks.

Grey-Crowned Cranes also reach maturity at the age of three to four years and once they have found a mate, they usually lay 2 – 3 large smooth eggs in a wetland nest surrounded by tall reeds, secluded from predators. These spring and summer breeders incubate their eggs for about 30 days and take their chicks out onto a nursery area of flattened reeds before they venture into the real world to forage. Chicks fledge at 3 – 4 months and leave their parents when almost a year old to join one of the non-breeding flocks where they look for a mate.

Yellow Weevil (Lixus aemulus)

They think that there are 48,000 species of Weevils (family Curculionidea)in the animal kingdom of which we have about 2,500 species. Mostly they are brow / black in color but I was lucky enough to find this lovely yellow one. He is about 1 inch in body length and are plant eaters.

They are not endemic to SA and do a lot of damage to plants.