Closer and side view....
Look carefully and you can make out its antennae and legs but it has covered itself with bark and stones.
I have asked around and no one can tell me what it is. There are a few species which cover themselves like this but most are worms without antennea and legs. Any ideas what it might be?
I had caught this dragonfly and put it in my tank in order to take some pictures of it. It made a wonderful reflection in the glass.
At one of the dams, this herd of hippo were cooling off and as I walked along the banks, they did not take their eyes off my. It is a scary feeling.
All of a sudden, out pops this mother and baby and I was lucky enough to catch the drops of water still raining down on them. Hippo can remain submerged for up to 5 minutes.
The Masked Weavers prefer trees growing in the middle of dams to build their nests in. This way, some of their predators like egg eating snakes are ruled out.
WOW!! What fantastic color it is and could not resist taking a picture or two. 
This was another one which was so pretty with its stripes. I wish I had a fishtank again!!
I sometimes think I would have loved to have done underwater photograpy too as there are so many beautiful things down at the bottom of out oceans. This is called a Fire Shrimp and comes from South America.
I put him in my tank and went out searching for some food for him and managed to find a few small grasshoppers.
Oh boy!! What a meal that was and I could see how much he enjoyed it. It is almost as if he was licking his lips at the delicious meal. :)
This is a VERY small Baobab Tree. They grow to over 3000 years old at a very slow rate of 1inch in diameter every 100 years one specimen being 8 metres/yards around!! They grow only in dry, hot areas of the northern part of SA. This is the tree which we get Crème of Tartar from and is derived from the seeds. There are many legends and superstitions surrounding these trees and authentic accounts of them bursting into flame by spontaneous combustion. They are protected here even though their seeds germinate fairy easily.
A Rock Monitor came past and gave me the beady eye so I grabbed my camera to see if I could get a few pictures of its tongue.
It disappeared fairly quickly into the bush….
And all I managed to get was this one shot which unfortunately does not show its fork. The tongue is used as a scent gland and is moved in and out of the mouth as it walks along searching for food.
Robber flies are predators and will kill and eat almost anything including its own kind. 
What was amazing was the fact that no matter what the skink did, the snake made sure that part of his body was always across the skink in order to hold it down and it could not move.
All snakes have a lower jaw which they can unhinge and if you have a look at the mouth in this series of pictures, you can see how it stretches to accommodate the size of his prey which is at least 5 times bigger.
Brown House snakes are medium sized and less than 3 feet in length. They have no fangs and are not venomous an so constrict their prey.
Once the prey is ingested, the stomach fluids dissolve the prey and all which is left is a small, cylindrical pellet which they regurgitate.
Because of their slow metabolic rate, reptiles need to eat less frequently than other animals or humans and can go for long periods without food, especially in the winter.
On my walk I passed this little dam and liked the reflection of the reeds in it.
Now here was an astonishing fellow!! He is less than ½ an inch in body length and fitted in so well with the stones in the road. It even looks as if his skin is made of them. This is one of our Burrowing Grasshoppers and they use their long middle leg for digging in soft soil when disturbed.
This is a Bushveld Lizard (Heliobolus lugubris) and about 9 inches in length. Most of the time when lizards discard their tails, they grow new ones which look different but that is not the case with this one, the whole species have tails different to their bodies.
They dig burrows in the sand in which to lay their eggs in summer. This one gave me a good laugh - the sand was hot and he would walk a few steps then raise one foot and waggle it around, then walk a few more and raise another. So he gave each foot a periodic rest from the heat. It looked quite funny. In this picture you can see the front, right hand side foot raised. I have seen many lizards do this and it always makes me smile.
Here he decided to try to climb over a PVC pipe which was much too slipper even with those long nails of his. He sure does have good muscles in his legs.
A pretty flower growing on a wild bush.
A Tussock moth (Lymantriidae)
Oblique Peacock Moth (Chaismia simplicilinea) is of medium size and feed on Wattle.
I am not 100% on this one but think it is a Grammodes stolida.
This cat is very interesting in that the white stripe glows and is very visable in the dark.
The pupa of an Acraea butterfly.
With its coloration and the leaf-like part on its back, I would definitely say it falls into the leaf mantis category don’t you?
A front foot which it was using to hold onto my finger.
Its body…….
A closer look at the antennae/crown. And ideas about it? Is it just there for disguise?
