Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

From Friday 12 June to Tuesday 16 June my reptile-expert friend Ruan Stander and I were out herping (that is to say seeking reptiles and amphibians) in Venda! It was the middle of the winter here in South Africa, but where we went, it was warm, being entirely in the tropics and at a much lower altitude than our hometown of Polokwane. The climate is ideal for cold-blooded critters. We went to a few different places. We set up our tents a short distance above the Cross Dam on the Nwanedzi River. The region is sparsely populated; we only met some folks at the dam on the first day, and on the second night some people came by our tents with flashlights and dogs; they might have been hunting, and didn't bother us. We also went to the small settlement of Masisi, the Bende-Mutale region, and the Honnet Nature Reserve, but we slept each night at our Cross Dam Camp.

Ruan's goal is to find and photograph as many of Limpopo's reptile species as possible. He had several goals for this outing; we found at least some of our targets! The environment at the Cross Dam is rocky hills covered in arid woodland, while there is lush riverine forest with large trees bordering the Nwanedzi River. A bit to the north, there is flat, sandy land. At Masisi there are well-vegetated rocky hills; Bende Mutale is mainly flat, dry Mopane veld. Honnet Nature Reserve has a dry climate, with a large, rocky hill that we climbed halfway, and also an old, huge, now-vegetated dune of Kalahari sand. These all gave us numerous habitats for finding different reptile species.

I was of course also interested in the plant life! The hills are a northern extension of the Soutpansberg Mountain range. A tree that is very characteristic of this region is the Lebombo Ironwood, Androstachys johnsonii, an ancient species shared between South Africa and Madagascar. In higher rainfall parts of the mountains, they form dense forests, but here the trees were shrubby and stunted, only occasionally forming small thickets. Other characteristic plants were the giant Baobab trees, and several other thick-set trees and large succulents, like Star-chestnuts, Sterculia rogersii, Sesame Bushes, Sesamothamnus lugardii, the grotesque Elephant's Foot, Adenia spinosa, and the beautiful flowering Impala Lily, Adenium multiflorum. I was also happy to note numerous individuals of trees I consider as fairly rare, such as the Propeller Tree, Gyrocarpus americanus and the Mountain Mahogany, Entandrophragma caudatum. Other very nice finds included two species of carrion flower in the genus Stapelia, a rare tree-like succulent restricted to those mountains, Euphorbia zoutpansbergensis, and a Sand Impala Lily or Bitterkambro, Adenium oleifolium, in the sandy region to the north of our camp. The Honnet Nature Reserve had interesting dune plants; here I show you one of the largest Sheperd's Trees, Boscia albitrunca, I've ever seen, with Ruan for comparison. This is an arid-adapted species, that has among the longest roots in the entire plant kingdom. A medium-sized one can have a root going down in the deep sand to a depth of 60 m/200'! You also see here the characteristic reddish-brown Kalahari Desert sand.

We were 'hunting' reptiles day and night. Many species were in evidence! Flat lizards, Platysaurus rhodesianus, and rainbow skinks, Trachylepis margaritifer, clung to the steep rock faces around the dam region, and tropical spiny agamas, Agama armata, like the one you see here, were about as well. At night, we found flat geckoes, Afroedura pienaari, velvet geckoes, Homopholis wahlbergii, Turner's geckoes, Chondrodactylus turneri, tropical house geckoes, Hemidactylus mabouia (using a huge baobab as a house), and one of our targets, the Tiger Thick-toed Gecko, Pachydactylus tigrinus. It is actually a tiny thing but exquisitely patterned! Young ones curl their tails up over their backs, resembling scorpions (of which we also found many!). We also found a few geckoes in the day, including a Speckled Thick-toed Gecko, Pachydactylus punctatus, and some Bradfield's Dwarf Geckoes, Lygodactylus bradfieldi.

In the day, in the woodland, we encountered bushveld lizards, Heliobolus lugubris, common rough-scaled lizards, Meroles squamulosus, Holub's sandveld lizards, Nucras holubi, LOTS of Damara variable skinks, Trachylepis damarana, and the small but cute spotted-necked snake-eyed skink, Panaspis maculicollis. Under rocks and logs, we found the burrowing species. These lizards have reduced or even missing limbs. They're a wonderful example of evolution practically visible in front of your eyes as you compare the different kinds at different stages of leg reduction. Sundevall's writhing skink, Mochlus sundevallii, a sleek and glossy species, still has small but fully-formed limbs, but the Limpopo dwarf burrowing skink, Scelotes limpopoensis, has tiny legs and mere stubs for 'arms'. The Richard's legless skink, Acontias richardi, as you might conclude has no legs at all; though resembling a small snake, it is still a proper lizard – like the other two, it belongs to the skink family. We did find a true snake, a tiny black-headed centipede eater, Aparallactus capensis; showing its snakeness, it fitfully flicked out its little tongue as we held it. One of the most special finds of the outing was made by Given, a local who joined us on the Bende-Mutale and Masisi parts of our excursion. It was a slender spade-snouted worm lizard, Monopeltis sphenorhynchus! These reptiles look amazingly similar to earthworms. They belong to a group called the Amphisbaenians, a sister group of the true lizards. This is the first time I've seen one!

Apart from the reptiles, there were many other memorable moments of the trip. We encountered mammals: at night, the thick-tailed bush-babies cried. We found gerbils amidst the rocks and also a mouse, which I couldn't identify, but got so close to that I touched it – but I was a bit scared to catch it. We also encountered a genet close to our car, and each morning, as we sat in the car and ate breakfast, a little rock elephant shrew came out and hopped about the rocks and stones beside the river. On the rocky hills, we saw what might have been a bush hyrax. Baboons live in the mountains also, and a group slept above a steep cliff beside the river.

We encountered birds: along the stretch of river where we had parked, there were no less than three species of kingfisher! The giant kingfishers called and flew noisily back and forth; the pied kingfisher was rather more subdued, and least obtrusive of all, but quite lovely, were a couple of half-collared kingfishers that had their territory amidst some lovely riverine forest trees. One morning a Burchell's coucal, a typically shy kind of non-parasitic cuckoo, came out and sunned itself out in the open before our car, displaying its beautiful bright reddish-brown wings. We even glimpsed a splendid Verreaux's Eagle soaring high above the cliffs.

We encountered amphibians: at night in and beside the river we found river frogs, some of them even mating in the middle of the winter! There were also tropical clawed frogs in still pools, and we found a little dwarf Puddle frog, Phrynobatrachus mababiensis, as well.

We encountered invertebrates galore! Seeking reptiles underneath rocks and logs, we often instead found things like spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, woodlice, cockroaches, ants and termites. This shows that there's plenty of food for our little snakes and lizards! Here you see a particularly large scorpion, in Ruan's hand. The scorpion was quite placid and at any rate its thin tail shows that it's not very dangerous. An unusual sighting was a mole cricket at night by the river! It actually swam in the water a bit. This species is now well-known as occurring on well-watered suburban lawns, but this is actually its natural habitat: very moist grassy spots beside rivers or pools. It is strange, but not unheard of, for a critter to both dig and swim.

We found twenty-five different reptile species in all. I found some rare and unexpected plants. It was quite a successful bio-surveying outing. Reptiles, as well as plants, are quite vulnerable to environmental changes, and thus can serve as indicators of environmental health. But more importantly, they are beautiful, exquisite and fascinating beings in themselves, and they all deserve as much protection as we can give them. I thank Ruan, Given, and our Honnet Nature Reserve Guide, Joseph Saunders, for a lovely adventure.

PHOTO CREDITS: Scorpion, Sundevall's Writhing Skink, Carrion Flower, and Ruan with the Impala Lily, Sesame bush and Sheperd's Tree, by me. All other photos by Ruan Stander.

Willem

03.08.20 Front Page

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