From a wolf to a leopard

At the top of Klipbokkop

While we went out today high into the mountains at Klipbokkop, I was thinking how a project like this changes your thinking. Just over a week ago, plants were plants, birds were birds and insects were insects. Most of the latter crawly funny little things than can annoy, irritate or even scare you.

Having been with the team of scientists for the last few days, however started altering your mind a bit. You see everything as life. You see everything as valuable. An important balance of ecology. An environment that has suffered from the pressures put on it by man. Then you look at this Outreach team getting out there, turning over rocks, chasing plants and all forms of life to try and restore this delicate environmental imbalance. And you wish everybody was like that.

Somebody that really is like that is Ester van der Westhuizen, naturalist, Groen-presenter and owner of Butterfly World near Stellenbosch. She said:

Wolf spider

Wolf Spider

“While the plant people have been doing there thing on the one side, the insect people and the spider person have quietly worked their backsides off to collect, identify and sample their noenoes. The insect people collected a whopping 732 goggos so far and the lone spider person managed 45 different spiders. All of the spiders have been photographed and boast fancy names like the wolf spider, baboon spider, lynx spider, but they are not that big anyway. To identify a spider properly you have to look at its eyes and not many people want to look deeply into a spider’s eyes. Almost everything is exciting and a great find, whether it is an old favourite or something new.

“The insect people said most of their insects are beetles such as toktokkies – one reason may be that the diversity of Fynbos plants needs a diverse lot of pollinators. Running neck to neck for second place in the insect numbers competition are the flies versus the ants and wasps – no clear second placer yet! But they are all so lovely...”

Ant Lion

Baboon spider

From the wolf spider to the Cape leopard. We had an interesting presentation by Jeannie Hayward and Anita Meyer from the Cape Leopard Trust tonight. The Trust started off in the Cederberg but is going from strength to strength and Jeannie and Anita is now running the Boland section of the Trust.

BM7 male leopard at Klipbokkop

BM3 male leopard at Klipbokkop

Klipbokkop is also involved and the Trust has four cameras on the resort. Today we went out to collect data from one of the cameras and we are privileged enough to post a picture of one of the leopards they caught in the limelight. Jeannie and Anita have now recorded 15 Cape leopards on camera of which nine are males. Traditionally a male has between two and three females in his harem which means that there can be anything around 30 leopards in the Limietberg area. Fortunately it looks like the Cape leopard might not follow the Cape lion. Visit http://www.capeleopard.org.za/ for more info.

Setting the motion camera

Tomorrow we’re off to Kogelberg Biosphere reserve for some serious Fynbos.

This is Buddy blogging off ‘til then.