Tag Archives: wildlife

Speckled Rock Skink

Trachylepis punctatissima

The main population centre of the Speckled Rock Skink, a common and very adaptable lizard, encompasses Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa (Free State, Gauteng, western Kwazulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, North West and the eastern reaches of the Northern Cape) with a seperate population along the borders of Zambia and Malawi. They are diurnal, enjoy basking in the sun, feed on small invertebrates and inhabit a wide range of rocky grassland and savanna habitats, as well as urban landscapes. Speckled Rock Skinks become very tame around houses, especially where marauding pet cats are not a threat. In the colder, high-lying parts of their range they may hibernate through the harshest winter months. Females give birth to litters of 3-9 babies in summer. Adults measure around 19cm in length (including the tail).

The Speckled Rock Skink is closely related to the Striped Skink, was originally considered a race of that species, and is listed as being of least concern by the IUCN. It is also known as the Montane Speckled Skink.

Speckled Rock Skink

Mating Speckled Rock Skinks

Speckled Rock Skink

Speckled Rock Skinks

Speckled Rock Skink

Speckled Rock Skink in Golden Gate Highlands National Park

Speckled Rock Skink

Speckled Rock Skink (photo by Joubert)

Speckled Rock Skink

Speckled Rock Skink inside a tree stump

Baby Speckled Rock Skink

Speckled Rock Skink

Jackal Buzzard

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Buteo rufofuscus

The Jackal Buzzard is a large bird of prey (wingspan up to 1.4m, weight up to 1.7kg, females being the larger sex) found only in Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa. While they do occur over arid scrublands, open grasslands and agricultural areas they are most common in hilly and mountainous areas where they are usually the most numerous and conspicuous large raptor. They feed mainly on small mammals, birds, reptiles and carrion and occasionally insects and frogs.

Outside of the spring & summer breeding season they’re usually seen singly, though pairs do seem to be monogamous and share a territory. Nests are built atop large trees or rocky ledges and are often re-used in consecutive years. The female incubates the clutch of 1-3, eggs, while the male brings food to her over a 6 week period, with the chicks staying in the nest for up to 2 months after hatching before attempting their first flight. Last hatched chicks are often much smaller than their sibling and frequently dies as it cannot compete for food. The chicks stay with their parents for quite some time after leaving the nest.

The Jackal Buzzard gets its name from its call, which could easily be confused for that of the Black-backed Jackal. It is considered of least concern by the IUCN, though unintentional poisoning may be a concern. They have a life expectancy of around 25 years.

Jackal Buzzard in flight

Jackal Buzzard

Jackal Buzzard in flight over Thendele

This Jackal Buzzard (photographed by Marilize) was our first sighting just in at the gate at Giant’s Castle

Jackal Buzzard

Jackal Buzzard in flight over Giant’s Castle

Jackal Buzzard

Jackal Buzzards

Common Blue Butterflies

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Leptotes species

We have four-species of Leptotes butterflies that are so similar to each other that they’re impossible to distinguish in the field. Three of these, the Common Zebra Blue (L. pirithous), the Babault’s Blue (L. babaulti) and Short-toothed Blue (L. brevidentatus) are widely distributed over the country, while Jeannel’s Blue (L. jeanneli) occurs only in the Lowveld.

The Common Blues inhabit a wide range of natural vegetation, cultivated fields and gardens all over the country throughout the year. They’re also familiar over most of the rest of Africa, Madagascar, the Near East and southern Europe. Adults often congregate at wet mud and have a wingspan of 2-3cm.

The larvae feeds on Plumbago and plants from the legume family. Adults are on the wing year-round, though much more numerous in the warmer months. Their complete life-cycle spans about 2 months.

Common Blue (Leptotes sp)

Common Blue (Leptotes sp) (photo by Joubert)

Common Blue Butterfly

Common Blue (Leptotes sp)

Mating Common Blue butterflies

Common Blue Butterfly

Common Blue butterfly

Mating Common Blue butterflies

Cape Turtle Dove

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Streptopelia capicola

The Cape Turtle Dove, also known as the Ring-necked Dove, is one of South Africa’s most common and widespread birds, occurring in every corner of the country in a wide range if habitats, both natural and man-made. They feed on seeds, fruit and small invertebrates, foraged predominantly on the ground.

Cape Turtle Doves breed throughout the year and the monogamous pairs may raise up to 5 broods annually. They construct flimsy stick platforms for use as nests in which 2-4 eggs are incubated for about two weeks. The chicks are looked after by both parents and leave the nest when they’re about two weeks old, after which they may stay with the parents for as long as three weeks before becoming fully independent. Though they’re mostly seen singly or in pairs the Cape Turtle Dove may congregate in large flocks numbering in the hundreds, especially at waterholes or feeding grounds.

Adult Cape Turtle Doves measure about 27cm in length and weigh around 150g. Their peaceful song is a welcome addition to the playlist in any garden. Apart from South Africa, Cape Turtle Doves are also to be found over all of Africa south of the equator and extending to Ethiopia and Somalia in the north-east. The IUCN lists the species as being of least concern, and it is probably expanding both its distribution and population.

Cape Turtle Dove

Cape turtle dove

Cape Turtle Dove

Cape Turtle Dove (Photo by Joubert)

Cape Turtle Dove

Cape Turtle-Dove

Cape Turtle Dove

Cape Turtle Doves drinking from the waterhole at Elephant Sands

Cape Turtle Dove

River Lily

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Hesperantha sp.

The River Lily is a much-loved plant in gardens the world over, but it grows wild here in saturated soil along the mountain streams of South Africa’s Drakensberg Range. These bulbous plants stand about 50cm high, grow and flower in full sun during summer with the beautiful blooms being carried from December to April. Apart from the pink form shown here there’s also white and bright red varieties growing wild, while cultivated forms with much wider petals than the wild forms are normally sold at nurseries. The flowers are pollinated by butterflies and flies, and the whole plant goes dormant in winter.

River Lilies

Beautiful wildflowers at Golden Gate: River Lilies

River Lily

Red River Lilies

Golden-breasted Bunting

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Emberiza flaviventris

A species of open woodland and savanna, the beautiful Golden-breasted Bunting feeds mainly on seeds and other plant material, with invertebrates foraged on the ground being an important supplementary food source especially during the breeding season. They’re rather dependent on a reliable source of drinking water, and increasingly gardens, farmyards and exotic plantations is also being utilised as habitat. They’re usually encountered singly, in pairs or small groups.

During spring and summer, monogamous pairs of Golden-breasted Bunting nest in untidy nests built by the female close to the ground in a thick shrub or other dense growth. Clutches of 2 or 3 eggs are incubated, also by the female, for around 2 weeks, with the chicks fledging at about the same length of time after hatching. Adults measure around 16cm in length and weigh approximately 20g.

Golden-breasted Buntings are considered of least concern by the IUCN. They occur patchily over sub-Saharan Africa, with the main centre of their distribution falling in southern and central Africa. In South Africa they are found in all provinces with the exception of the Western Cape.

Golden-breasted Bunting

Olive Thrush

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Turdus olivaceus

Olive Thrushes are usually seen singly or in pairs, searching for worms, insects and other invertebrates (and occasionally fruit) on the floor of indigenous woodlands and forests and increasingly in well-planted parks and gardens. Adults weigh around 65g and measure about 23cm in length.

Olive Thrushes breed throughout the year, though there appears to be a peak in nesting during spring and early summer. Pairs are monogamous and territorial. Females build cup-shaped nests high up in trees and shrubs and incubate the clutch of 1-3 eggs over a two week period. The chicks grow quickly and leave the nest when they’re around 16 days old, but they will remain with their parents for up to two months.

Olive Thrushes occur patchily in Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa (Western Cape to escarpment of Mpumalanga and Limpopo). The IUCN regards it to be of least concern. The Karoo Thrush was previously considered to be a subspecies of the Olive Thrush and it is possible that the two species may interbreed on occasion.

Olive Thrush

Olive thrush

Olive Thrush

Easter at Marakele

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If you thought we were a bit quiet over the Easter Weekend you’d be right, as we disappeared into the Marakele National Park in the Waterberg Mountains of the Limpopo Province, celebrating the cornerstone of our Chrisitian faith with good friends and family surrounded by awesome scenery and beautiful wildlife.

Welcome to Marakele National Park

The full moon rising over the Waterberg (photo by Joubert)

Early morning at Marakele

The view from the road to the top of Lenong Viewpoint on the mountain

Everlastings thrive on the mountain

Marakele scenery

Impressive cliffs looming over Thutong

Marakele scenery

The view from the top of Lenong Viewpoint on the mountain

Marakele scenery

The plains and Tlopi Dam below Mbidi Loop

Marakele afternoon sun

Common Sugarbush bud (photo by Joubert)

View over the valley and Waterberg range from Thutong

Marakele’s such a treasure chest of diverse wildlife that it is hard to decide what to show and what to leave out. Let’s start then with a few of the “creepy crawlies” that we encountered while exploring the Park.

Adult Blotched Antlion

Broad-bordered Grass Yellow

Guinea-fowl Butterfly

Common Orange Tip butterfly (male)

Zebra White butterfly

Large moth

Praying Mantis

Two-spotted Tyrant Beetle

A Velvet Ant female – the females are flightless

Flattie Spider against a bathroom wall

Grass Funnel-web Spider

Red Toad

Baby Turner’s Giant Gecko

Turner’s Giant Gecko

Speckled Rock Skink (photo by Joubert)

Western Stripe-bellied Sand Snake

WIth Autumn now in full swing in South Africa most of the summer visiting migrant birds have departed for warmer environs already, but bird watching at Marakele over Easter was still a special treat!

Black-crowned Tchagra

Cape Bunting

Cape Robin Chat

Cape Rock Thrush (male)

Cape Vultures in flight over Marakele – the Park is home to the world’s biggest colony of these birds.

Emerald-spotted Wood Dove

Familiar Chat

Fork-tailed Drongo

Freckled Nightjar

Southern Grey-headed Sparrow

Lesser Striped Swallow

Long-tailed Paradise Whydah (shortly before molting)

Mocking Cliff-Chat male

Pearl-spotted Owlet

Rock Kestrels in flight

White-fronted Bee-eater

Yellow-fronted Canary

What would a National Park be without some charismatic large mammals? Marakele certainly didn’t disappoint on that score, even though the lush vegetation following the rainy season did make game-viewing a bit trickier than usual.

Blue Wildebeest

Cantankerous Buffalo bull

Dassie (Rock Hyrax)

Elephant visiting us at Thutong one night (caught on our camera-trap)

Elephant teenager showing off!

This elephant cow didn’t appreciate our presence one bit, even though we gave her plenty of space!

Giraffe bull

Impala ram

Impala lamb

Klipspringer ewe

Klipspringer pair

Kudu bull

Kudu calf

Kudu cow close-up

Majestic Kudu Bull

Juvenile Kudu

Kudu cow

Lioness (photo by Joubert)

Young male lion at Marakele

Nyala calf

Plains Zebras

Plains Zebra close-up

Vervet Monkey (photo by Joubert)

Warthog

White Rhinos

Altogether we spent 4 nights in Marakele on this trip, arriving late on the 18th and departing again on the morning of the 22nd of April 2019. When visiting Marakele in a big group there’s no better option than to stay at the Thutong Environmental Education Centre (as we did) in a remote corner of the Park.

Special friends and family sharing a beautiful piece of our country

Thutong Environmental Education Centre, Marakele NP, April 2019

We’ve covered Marakele extensively in previous posts on de Wets Wild, so why not have a read through all of them if you are interested to learn more about this magical piece of our country.

Drakensberg Malachite

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Chlorolestes draconicus

Occurring along sunlit, rocky, high-altitude mountain streams flowing through forested and other densely vegetated habitats, the Drakensberg Malachite is a beautiful damselfly that is found only in the Drakensberg Mountain Range along South Africa’s border with Lesotho – as most of its distribution falls within the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park, the IUCN considers the species to be of least concern. Nymphs live under water on rocks and roots, the eggs having been laid on vegetation overhanging the water and the larvae then dropping into the stream below after hatching. Both adults and nymphs feed on insects.

Drakensberg Malachite

Autumn Highlands Holidays – uKhahlamba Drakensberg

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After kicking off at Glen Reenen in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, the next destination on our Autumn Highlands Holidays itinerary was the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park in Kwazulu-Natal Province – we planned to spend five nights at Thendele in the Royal Natal National Park followed by five nights at the Giant’s Castle Game Reserve.

The Drakensberg is a favourite destination for many South Africans (like us!) and international visitors alike – with such magnificent scenery and diverse activities on offer to enjoy the great outdoors it is easy to understand why! We’ve already shown off the beauty of the Amphitheatre and the Cascades but the Drakensberg has so much more to see – just look:!

Moss and ferns growing on rocks in a forest at Thendele

View northwards from behind Thendele

Mahai stream

Moss and ferns growing on rocks in a forest at Thendele

Dooley Mountain

A quiet pool on the Mahai stream

Plowman’s Kop

View towards Devil’s Hoek from below Thendele

Looking towards Thendele from the Tugela Gorge trail

Tugela River

Policeman’s Helmet

Royal Natal scenery – a wider view of the Policeman’s Helmet

Royal Natal – Dooley Mountain

Small falls in Fairy Glen

Looking from Thendele towards Mahai

One would expect that any plants occurring in the often difficult climatic conditions of the Drakensberg would be very tough and hardy – and they are, but that doesn’t mean the plants found here are any less pretty than those found in more tropical climes! We’ll be showcasing a few of them in more detail in the coming weeks.

Moss growing on the trunk of a Real Yellowwood (Podocarpus latifolius) tree in the forest at Thendele

River Lily

Beautiful Drakensberg flowers

Highveld Cabbage Tree

Grassplume in the wind

Beautiful Drakensberg flowers

Drakensberg flowers

Highveld Cabbage Trees

Various kinds of ferns adorn the trails in Royal Natal

Common Tree Ferns

Common Tree Fern

River Lilies

Beautiful Drakensberg flowers

Common Sugarbush

Common Sugarbush dot a hillside below Thendele in Royal Natal National Park

The number of invertebrates that find a home in these harsh highland habitats always astounds me – there are interesting insects and spiders to be found almost everywhere you look! You can look forward to new posts featuring a few of these in the coming weeks as well!

Unidentified large moth

Male Giant Mantis / Common Green Mantis

African Grass Blue butterfly

Common Blue (Leptotes sp)

Julia Skimmer Dragonfly (immature)

Golden Orb-web Spider

Rainforest Brown butterfly

Common Hottentot Skipper (males)

Common Blue (Leptotes sp)

Cupreous Blue butterfly

Gaudy Commodore butterfly (dry season form)

Drakensberg Malachite

Pea Blue butterflies

Orb-web Spider

Highland Dropwing Dragonfly

Jaunty Dropwing Dragonfly

Gold-spotted Sylph butterfly

Water Bronze butterfly

Drakensberg Malachite

Rainforest Brown butterfly

Unidentified kind of spider

Do you still remember the great fun Joubert had photographing the guineafowls in Thendele? They’re just one of 83 species of birds we managed to identify during our time in “The ‘Berg” – here’s a few more of the feathered inhabitants of the Royal Natal section of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park and some of them will soon feature in their own posts here at de Wets Wild.

African Olive Pigeon

Familiar Chat

Fiscal Flycatcher

Southern Black Flycatcher

Cape Wagtail

Olive Thrush

Speckled Mousebird

African Black Duck

Black-headed Heron

Cape Robin-Chat

Cape White-eye

Chorister Robin-Chat

Common Moorhen

Dark-capped Bulbul

Egyptian Geese in flight

Male Greater Double-collared Sunbird

Hadeda Ibis

Helmeted Guineafowl youngsters

Little Grebe chick

Red-collared Widowbird

Southern Boubou

White-necked Raven

White-rumped Swift

African Dusky Flycatcher

Brimstone Canary

Black Cuckooshrike Male

Golden-breasted Bunting

Lazy Cisticola

Male Southern Double-collared Sunbird (male)

Jackal Buzzard in flight over Thendele

Levaillant’s Cisticola

Male Pin-tailed Whydah (lost the trailing feathers somehow)

Verreaux’s Eagle in flight over Thendele

Spotted Eagle Owl

Cape Rock Thrush (female)

Cape White-eye

Greater Striped Swallow

Tawny-flanked Prinia

We didn’t expect to find a pair of Southern Ground Hornbills roaming the grasslands in the rain at Rugged Glen!

We’ve already shown you some of the amphibians we found at Mahai, but Royal Natal is also home to many other kinds of four-footed creatures, both cold- and warm blooded.

Baboons grooming

Baboon posing for a photo

Female baboon with baby

Cape Grey Mongoose

Bushbuck ewe with unwelcome visitors

Bushbuck ewe in hiding

Common Duiker

Rock Hyrax, or Dassie

Southern Rock Agama

Red-sided Skink

Speckled Rock Skink

Thendele is the only accommodation option in the Royal Natal National Park (campers can set up their caravans and tents at Mahai or Rugged Glen) and is built in two sections – the older Lower Camp and the newer Upper Camp. All units have lovely views of the Amphitheatre, but those units in the Upper Camp are more spacious and has more privacy. On this trip however we stayed in unit 12, a 2-bedroomed chalet in the Lower Camp, for 5 nights, and had no reason for complaint – everything was in good working order and it was a very comfortable place to rest after a day exploring the scenic splendour on offer at Royal Natal.

Thendele Cottage #12, Royal Natal National Park, March 2019

Mist settling in at Thendele as we depart for Giant’s Castle

From Thendele we departed for Giant’s Castle, further south into the Drakensberg range, on the 26th of March. We were booked to stay at Giant’s Castle for 5 nights as well, but due to me feeling quite unwell we opted to return to Pretoria after just one night there. Unfortunately this meant that we left Giant’s Castle with very few photographs, but that’s a good excuse to return soon we think!

Gate into Giant’s Castle Reserve

Giant’s Castle, Unit 7, uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park, March 2019

View from unit 7 at Giant’s Castle

Large moth of an unidentified species

Cape White-eye

Olive Woodpecker

Baboon on a wet thatch roof at Giant’s Castle

Rock Hyrax, or Dassie

Highveld Cabbage Trees forming a focal point in a wooded cluster of trees at Giant’s Castle

The Royal Natal National Park and Giant’s Castle Game Reserve are our two favourite destinations in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park. Both of these places can be booked through Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife.

Location of Royal Natal and Giant’s Castle (drawn with Google Maps)

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Tag Archives: wildlife

Speckled Rock Skink

Trachylepis punctatissima

Jackal Buzzard

Buteo rufofuscus

Common Blue Butterflies

Leptotes species

Cape Turtle Dove

Streptopelia capicola

River Lily

Hesperantha sp.

Golden-breasted Bunting

Emberiza flaviventris

Olive Thrush

Turdus olivaceus

Easter at Marakele

Drakensberg Malachite

Chlorolestes draconicus

Autumn Highlands Holidays – uKhahlamba Drakensberg

Trachylepis punctatissima

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Buteo rufofuscus

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Leptotes species

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Streptopelia capicola

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Hesperantha sp.

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Emberiza flaviventris

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Turdus olivaceus

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Chlorolestes draconicus

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