Category Archives: South African Wildlife

The inhabitants of South Africa’s wild places

The Flying Handkerchief / Mocker Swallowtail Butterfly

Papilio dardanus

Not only is the Mocker Swallowtail one of the biggest and most beautiful butterflies to be found in South Africa, but it can also be one of the most confusing! The males, also known as Flying Handkerchiefs, boast extravagantly shaped wings with striking black and cream-white markings, while the females are excellent at mimicking at least 14 other species of foul-tasting or poisonous butterfly across their sub-Saharan African distribution, with their comparably larger size usually the best clue to their true identity. Adults have a wingspan measuring up to 11cm and fly throughout the year, though much less numerous in the cooler months.

The Mocker Swallowtail inhabits riverine, montane and coastal forests. In South Africa it is commonly found from the Garden Route, through Kwazulu-Natal and along the escarpment of Mpumalanga and Limpopo to the Soutpansberg range.

Larvae feed on a wide range of food plants from the Rutaceae family which includes citrus plants. The feminine progeny of a single female can metamorphose into a variety of mimic forms and don’t necessarily all look like their mother. Larvae grow quickly and complete their transformation within a few weeks.

A Flying Handkerchief – the male Mocker Swallowtail – seen along the trail in Hilltop Camp

A Flying Handkerchief – the male Mocker Swallowtail

Female Mocker Swallowtail mimicking the Friar butterfly

Female Mocker Swallowtaill mimicking the Friar butterfly

Female Mocker Swallowtail mimicking the Novice butterfly

Female Mocker Swallowtail mimicking the Novice butterfly (photo by Joubert)

Female Mocker Swallowtail mimicking the Layman butterfly

Female Mocker Swallowtail butterfly female

Flying Handkerchief – male Mocker Swallowtail butterfly

Cinnamon-breasted Bunting

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Emberiza tahapisi

Cinnamon-breasted Buntings, or to call them by a previous colloquial name Rock Buntings, inhabit stony and rocky slopes and hillsides, rocky outcrops, dry rocky streambeds, bare stony patches and even abandoned quarries and borrow-pits in woodland, savanna and grassland, and are regularly seen foraging on road verges. They are mainly seed-eaters but include a fair number of insects in their diet, and require regular access to drinking water.

Usually encountered singly, in pairs or small groups of three or four, it is highly unusual to find larger congregations of Cinnamon-breasted Buntings. They breed during spring and summer, forming monogamous pairs that build cup-shaped nests at the base of grass tufts or next to a rock. Clutches of 2-4 eggs are incubated by both parents over a 2 week period. Both parents feed the chicks at the nest until they fledge about two weeks after hatching, and the chicks remain with their parents for another month or so thereafter before moving off. Fully grown, Cinnamon-breasted Buntings weigh about 15g and measure 15cm in length.

The Cinnamon-breasted Bunting has a wide distribution throughout sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of deserts and the equatorial forest. In South Africa they’re found over most of the eastern half of the country. The IUCN considers the species to be of least concern.

Cinnamon-breasted Bunting

Cinnamon-breasted Bunting (photo by Joubert)

Cinnamon-breasted Bunting

World Wildlife Day 2021

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What better excuse to take another look at the 83 species of South African wildlife that we featured here at de Wets Wild in the past year than World Wildlife Day?

Beautiful African Leopard (Phalanta-butterfly)

Village Weaver (male)

Single-striped Grass Mouse

Violet-backed Starling

Rainbow Skink (male)

Gaudy Commodore (dry season form)

Brown Snake Eagle

Common Orange Tip (male)

Wood Sandpiper

Broad-bordered Grass Yellows

Amur Falcon

Common Hottentot Skipper (male)

Black-backed Puffback

Serrated Hinged Terrapin

Common Meadow White

Black-chested Snake Eagle

Small Orange Tip (male)

Buffy Pipit

Spotted Jokers congregating on rotting fallen fruit in Mpila

Purple Heron

Layman butterfly

Honey Bee on Cape Honeysuckle

White-throated Robin-Chat

African Common White

Ruff

Guinea-fowl Butterfly

Knob-billed Duck female

African Wild Cat

Male Lesser Masked Weaver

Geranium Bronze butterfly

Southern Black Tits

Swazi Lily

Brown-headed Parrot

Leprous Grasshopper

Cut-throat Finch male

Mating Purple Tips

Red-billed Buffalo Weaver in Satara

Wattled Starling (male in breeding colours)

Turner’s Thick-toed Gecko

Black Stork

A huge bush cricket (Clonia wahlbergii) that shared our open-air shower at Mapungubwe National Park

Diederik Cuckoo

Common Diadem (male)

Green-winged Pytilia (male)

African Migrant (Butterfly)

African Migrant (female form florella)

Little Bee-eater

Senegal Lapwing

Solifuge a.k.a. Sun Spider

Spotted Eagle Owl

Yellow-throated Plated Lizard

African Hawk Eagle

Free-tailed Bats roosting beneath the thatch at Mooiplaas’ ablutions

Lesser Striped Swallow

Sycomore Fig

Long-tailed Paradise Whydah

Male Red-backed Shrike (photo by Joubert)

Tree Creeper Scorpion

Green, or Red-billed, Wood-hoopoe

Variable Skink

Black-crowned Tchagra

Black-winged Stilt

Dung beetles

Little Swift reinforcing a nest

Spectacled Weaver

Patrician Blue

African Harrier Hawk

Common Dotted Border

Giant Plated Lizards

Matabele Ants

Ashy Flycatcher

Brown-crowned Tchagra

Forest Beauty

Fulvous Whistling Duck (photo by Joubert)

Red-faced Mousebird

Guttural Toad

Squacco Heron

Little Sparrowhawk

Brown Hyena at the junction of Thuthlwa and Tlou drives in Pilanesberg

Thick-billed Weaver

Greater Red Musk Shrew

Ghost Crabs

Crowned Eagle (captive)

Crowned Eagles

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We were about half-way through our visit to Cape Vidal in January 2021 when we found that a pair of Crowned Eagles were rearing a chick in a tall Casuarina tree right inside the camp and very near our cabin. The eagles were very careful not to attract attention to their nest and being known for attacking humans that venture too close to their nests we didn’t hang around there too often. We therefore got very few glimpses of the chick in its treetop fortress.

Crowned Eagle

Crowned Eagle in flight

Crowned Eagle nest

Crowned Eagle nestling

Crowned Eagle

Considered Africa’s most powerful eagle, capable of preying even on mammals the size of bushbuck, the Crowned Eagle is a very large bird of prey – females, the larger of the sexes, weighs up to 5kg and has a wingspan of around 1.6m. Crowned Eagles are forest birds, but have adapted to life in exotic plantations where there’s suitable prey available. Mammals – hyraxes, monkeys and antelope – make up the majority of their dietary intake and small pets regularly feature on the menu of Crowned Eagles living in or near urban areas that fall within their distribution range.

Crowned Eagles are monogamous and form lasting pair bonds, each pair defending a large tract of forest as their exclusive territory. Their large stick-platform nests are built by both partners on cliffs or at the top of tall forest trees. These nests are usually reused for consecutive years and are continuously added to, eventually becoming massive structures up to 3m tall. Clutches of two eggs are laid in the spring months and incubated over a seven week period, mostly be the female. Unless the first laid egg doesn’t hatch the older sibling will kill the younger soon after it hatches. While the male regularly brings food to the nest it never feeds the chick, this task is always performed by the female until the chick is about a month-and-a-half old, at which point it starts feeding itself on meals brought to it by the parent birds. The chick takes its first flight around four months after hatching and is finally chased from its parental territory when it is at least ten months old.

Though occurring widely over Africa’s forested areas, the IUCN lists the Crowned Eagle as being near-threatened, siting a decreasing population of no more than 50,000 mature individuals caused by habitat destruction and persecution by humans. In South Africa they’re found from the Garden Route, through the Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal, to the escarpment of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, the Soutpansberg range and the Pafuri region of the Kruger National Park.

Immature Crowned Eagle

Immature Crowned eagle

Distant view of a Crowned Eagle in the forest

Crowned Eagle

Crowned Eagle (captive)

Summertide Diary: Exploring Wilderness and surrounds

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21 December 2020

It pays to be out early in South Africa’s wild places, and the Wilderness section of the Garden Route National Park is no exception. Even when the sky is still heavy with rain and the sun nowhere to be seen.

A damp sunrise over the Serpentine

African Reed Warbler

Beware of children being followed by guineafowl and tortoises…

Pelargonium

Unidentified flower

Ertjieblom (identified with the kiind assistance of Bonnita Hill)

Sombre Greenbul looking even more glum in the rain…

Wild Camphor Bush

Grass Flower-heads

Red-eyed Dove

Brown-hooded Kingfisher

Greater Striped Swallow

After breakfast we felt like exploring a little further afield, and so headed to the Woodville indigenous forest a few kilometers away from Ebb-and-Flow. We explored the wet forest, marveled at the enormous Outeniqua Yellowwood that rules over it and kept a lookout for birds and other creatures trying to hide from us, until we could stand the pestering mosquitoes no more!

Woodville Forest

Woodville Forest’s giant Outeniqua Yellowwood (Podocarpus falcatus)

Woodville Forest – Common Arum Lily

Common Arum Lily

Unidentified flower

Woodville Forest

Woodville Forest’s giant Outeniqua Yellowwood (Podocarpus falcatus)

Large Wild Iris

African Paradise Flycatcher

Common Bush Brown

Forest Buzzard

From Woodville we extended our joy ride to Rondevlei and the Swartvlei beach, and then had a quick look around the holiday town of Sedgefield, of which I have many happy childhood memories, before heading back to camp.

Unidentified flower

Water droplets on a blade of grass

Unidentified flower

White-breasted Cormorant

Cross-berry

Swartvlei Beach with Gericke’s Point

Kelp Gull scavenging on the beach

Just being outside at Wilderness was such balm for the soul. You don’t always have to be out chasing the “hairy and scary” animals for which Africa is famous to enjoy yourself in our wild places…

African Hoopoe

Common Star-Apple

Grass Flower-head

As yet unidentified tree in Wilderness

Sooty Blue butterfly

Another Wilderness mystery plant

Unidentified flower

Sour Fig

Guineafowl feather

Water droplets on aloe leaves

Bar-throated Apalis

More frog hunting before bed-time resulted in these photographs of Raucous Toads:

Raucous Toad

If you’d like to read more about the Wilderness section of the Garden Route National Park, please have a look at this special feature about it that we published a while ago.

Greater Red Musk Shrew

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Crocidura flavescens

One of the real highlights of our visit to the Wilderness section of the Garden Route National Park was an encounter with a rarely seen small mammal: a Greater Red Musk Shrew.

Although it is tiny, weighing only about 30g, the Greater Red Musk Shrew is one of the biggest members of the shrew-family occurring in South Africa. We found the shrew next to a reed bed along the Touw River – typical habitat for the species, although they do occasionally venture into gardens and houses. Greater Red Musk Shrews are insectivores, feeding on a wide range of insects, worms and other invertebrates, and like other shrews have a relatively enormous appetite needing to consume at least half its own weight on a daily basis.

These cute creatures are mostly nocturnal, so we count ourselves very lucky seeing one in daylight (although heavily overcast) and out in the open. By day they hide in grass-nests built slightly above ground level in dense grass cover.

Females give birth to up to 7 young after a gestation of only a month, mainly in the summer months. The babies follow their mother around from 6 days old by forming a “train” nose-to-tail with their siblings. Like other shrews they live extremely fast-paced lives – the young are weaned at only 3 weeks old, reaching sexual maturity when they’re 2-3 months old and then have a life expectancy of maximum 18 months!

The IUCN considers the Greater Red Musk Shrew to be of least concern in conservation terms. It is almost endemic to South Africa, occurring all along our coast from Namaqualand to Maputaland and into extreme southern Mozambique and also along the Drakensberg through Lesotho and eSwatini to the escarpment in Mpumalanga.

Greater Red Musk Shrew

Greater Red Musk Shrew (photo by Joubert)

Greater Red Musk Shrew

Greater Red Musk Shrew (photo by Joubert)

Joubert photographing the Greater Red Musk Shrew at Wilderness

Summertide Rambles 28 December 2020

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With it being a rather hot day in the Addo Elephant National Park today another of the Park’s star attractions – the Addo Flightless Dung Beetle – were out in their numbers gathering food for their progeny.

Addo Flightless Dung Beetle

Thick-billed Weaver

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Amblyospiza albifrons

During the breeding season, which extends through spring and summer, Thick-billed Weavers can be found near and in marshes and other wetlands with rank grass and reedbeds, but they roam more widely at other times and are then found from forest edges to suburban parks and gardens. They use their strong bills (ask anyone who’s ever handled a Thick-billed Weaver) to good effect feeding on fruit, pips and seeds. They’re one of the largest species of weaver in South Africa, measuring 18cm in length and weighing up to 50g.

The males alone construct the colony of characteristic dome-shaped nests anchored to two or more reeds or thick-stemmed, tall grasses, while the female, if she accepts the nest, will line the inside with soft materials. Males attempt to attract and mate with as many females as possible. The female lays a clutch of 2-4 eggs which she incubates by herself over a two week period. She’s also the sole caretaker to the chicks, which leave the nest about 3 weeks after hatching.

The Thick-billed Weaver has a very patchy distribution over sub-Saharan Africa and the IUCN considers it to be of least concern, siting a common and apparently stable population. In South Africa they’re found in the wetter eastern and northern provinces, and absent from most of the Free State and the Northern and Western Cape. They’ve actually expanded their distribution considerably in recent years due to the availability of suitably vegetated artificial wetlands, like sewerage treatment installations, being constructed.

Thick-billed Weaver nests

Thick-billed Weaver female

Thick-billed Weaver caught in a mist-net during a bird-ringing exercise

Thick-billed Weaver female

Thick-billed Weaver

Thick-billed Weaver female

Thick-billed Weaver

Thick-billed Weaver male

Thick-billed Weaver female

Thick-billed weaver taking his seat on the patio furniture at Doornkop

Thick-billed Weaver female

Thick-billed Weaver male (photo by Joubert)

Thick-billed Weaver female

Thick-billed Weaver (photo by Joubert)

Brown Hyena

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Parahyaena brunnea

Brown Hyenas are found in a wide selection of habitats, occurring from moist mountain grasslands to desert coastlines (earning them their old Afrikaans name “Strandwolf”, translating as “Beach Wolf”). They’re often found near rocky hills, these providing shelter in the form of dense vegetation and caves, but where this isn’t available they will use burrows dug by themselves or other animals as dens. Brown Hyenas feed mainly on carrion, ostrich eggs and wild fruits, with prey they catch themselves making up only a very small percentage of their total dietary intake. They are not dependent on surface water but will drink where and when it is available.

Territorial family groups, known as clans, are the principal social grouping in Brown Hyena society. These number up to 18 individuals, though around 7 is more usual. Adult males are nomadic and move from one clan to the next, mating with receptive females. Territories are marked with dung and scent glands and neighbouring clans will get involved in serious fights over territory. Brown Hyenas are mostly nocturnal and most active just after sunset and just before sunrise. They may cover enormous distances on their nightly excursions in search of food.

Female Brown Hyenas give birth to 1-5 tiny cubs at any time, approximately 3 months after mating. Females look after the cubs by themselves for the first 2 to 3 months after birth, before introducing them to the rest of the clan. While they start eating solid food from 3 months old, the cubs are only weaned at about a year of age. At about 15 months old the cubs are big enough to fend for themselves. Fully grown Brown Hyenas weigh around 45kg and stand about 80cm high at the shoulder, males being only slightly larger than females. Brown Hyenas have a life expectancy of up to 25 years in the wild, though larger predators are a considerable threat.

Much rarer and less well known than the larger Spotted Hyena, the Brown Hyena is also the hyena species with the most limited distribution. The IUCN estimates that there’s a total of between 4,300 and 10,100 adult Brown Hyenas left in the wild (half of which in Botswana), and evaluates its conservation status as being near threatened. The biggest threats to their continued survival is persecution by livestock farmers and habitat loss. While they occur at low densities almost all over South Africa, with a population estimated at probably no higher than 2,200 within our borders, the best places to go looking for Brown Hyenas in South Africa in our experience is the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and Pilanesberg National Park. Apart from South Africa and Botswana, Brown Hyenas are also found in Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, while it is doubtful any remain in Lesotho, eSwatini (Swaziland) and Mozambique.

Brown Hyena

Brown Hyena nad Black-backed Jackal at Mavuso’s carcass

Brown Hyena

Brown Hyena at the junction of Thuthlwa and Tlou drives in Pilanesberg

Brown Hyena

Brown Hyena and Black-backed Jackals at Mavuso’s carcass

Brown Hyena and Black-backed Jackals on a carcass

Brown Hyena carefully approaching Mavuso’s carcass

Brown Hyena

Little Sparrowhawk

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Accipiter minullus

It might be the smallest member of the genus Accipiter (comprising 51 species of sparrow- and goshawks) but the Little Sparrowhawk isn’t a raptor that ought to be underestimated, especially if you are a small bird (up to the size of doves), rodent, bat, lizard or frog – small vertebrates making up the bulk of their diet. They hunt by ambushing prey from dense foliage, striking swiftly and acrobatically. Due to their small size and adeptness at hiding, the Little Sparrowhawk is easily overlooked. They prefer dense habitats, inhabiting a range of forest, thicket, woodland and riverine plant communities.

Little Sparrowhawks are monogamous and pairs defend a territory. The female builds the nest, which is little more than a platform of sticks and leaves, high in the fork of a large tree. They breed mainly in the spring season, laying 1-3 eggs that are incubated by both parents in turns for approximately a month. The chicks grow quickly and leave the nest by the time they’re a month old, but they remain in their parents’ territory until the next breeding season before they disperse. Fully grown, female Little Sparrowhawk weighs just 100g (males are about a quarter smaller still) and measure 25cm in length.

The Little Sparrowhawk occurs from Ethiopia and Eritrea southwards through most of central and eastern Africa all the way to South Africa, and its conservation status is listed as “least concern” by the IUCN. In our country they can be found from the coastal Eastern Cape, through most of Kwazulu-Natal and into Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Gauteng and North West Province.