h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I live near wetlands, so maybe there are some near me.

Willem, I am astonished by their wide range. They must be extremely successful in their fishing and social structure.

I look forward to rare unicorn versions of them

Hi Elektra and Paulh! Thanks for reading and commenting. I still don't quite know why some species are so super-widely distributed, and others almost ridiculously restricted. Here in South Africa we have a kind of barbet and it only lives in a single forest of a few square kilometers in size. But it's thriving there!

Paulh, just seek some trees by the side of any body of water … you might see some of them lurking in there, if you're lucky. Tell me if you find a unicorn-heron.

We used to see them when we lived in North Carolina - there was a swamp nearby.

Swamps can have some beautiful plants and animals.

Yep, and America has some of the finest swamps in the world!

Although the politically correct call them 'wetlands' now.

In my youth, I would wander in the woods, admiring hundreds of Ladyslippers on the bank of a brook, or Blue Flag irises growing in the water in a swamp.

South Africa is generally a very dry country, so wetlands are few and far between … and very precious to all sorts of little things! One of my own fond memories is hiking in the veld (as a kid, perhaps 10 or 12 years old) back when there still existed vast wild countryside just beyond the yard. Suddenly in front of me there was this body of water! It was a 'vlei', a kind of wetland of water that collects in a shallow depression in good rain years. I waded in … can't remember if I took my shoes off first (if I'd even been wearing shoes) but there was thick green pond scum on top and a bit of a funky smell, and the mud bottom was very squishy and I'd really have to pull to get my feet out for each step. I waded well in, and then started to worry about things in the water biting me. I might have imagined feeling a bite or two … and I don't know if I might have imagined it, but I thought I saw a leech on me also! But I remember the little vlei with fondness. Much later I stumbled, I think, on the same place again, this time from a different direction. And being a bit more attuned now, I heard the calls of masses of frogs! Particularly there were the calls of bubbling kassinas, and banded rubber frogs (both featured in colours of wildlife). Later returns to the place rewarded me with baby giant bullfrogs, and a glimpse of a very rare bird, a dwarf bittern.

And now the place is going down fast … surrounded by houses, water flow cut off, people dumping their rubbish there, lots of non-native invasive plants …


South Africa has indeed lost lots of its original wetland habitats. This is actually causing the country to dry up even worse. I hope you folks over there are smarter!

Yeah, the U.S. is full of stable geniuses.