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

Today I had a visit from friends. They took me to see the site of a new school their children will be going to. Across the terrain is a large pond with a bit of wild countryside around it, so after looking at the grounds we took a walk around the pond. There were many intersting sights!

In the upturned earth where the buildings were to be constructed were some plovers, and I also heard a Swainson's Francolin (a kind of partridge with a bright red face). Then at the pond there were wood sandpipers, Egyptian geese with little goslings (actually ducklings since 'goose' in its case is a misnomer, it actually being a kind of large shelduck), European Bee Eaters flying overhead, striped swallows and palm swifts clipping the water surface to drink, a grey heron in a tree, cattle egrets, sacred ibises, white-winged widowbirds in the rank growth, and queleas (I think) as well.

We saw interesting plants too. They'd just bought some plants from me, including a Kleinia longiflora, a sjambok bush. There were sjambok bushes growing wild in the 'veld' close to the school. Around the pond were mostly thorn trees, including a candle thorn bush which wears its pods standing upright like candles instead of hanging down like most thorn tree pods. There were puzzle bushes, wild pears, Buffalo thorns ... there were several different plants of the pea family, one bearing very pretty large yellow flowers. We saw a big fat carpenter bee visiting some of those. There were wild 'pumpkins' scrambling over the trees; we saw four different kinds; I gave my friend a taste of the sweet red pulp around the seeds of one of them - the others were not really edible. There were plants that don't have a common name ... the scientific name is Pergularia daemia, I think we should call them 'fluff grenades' because the pod (which has a somewhat rough, knobby, hand-grenade like surface) bursts open at ripeness releasing hundreds of seeds with big fluff parachutes attached. We also saw a wild sesam flower, a relative of the plants that yield sesame seeds. The kids seemed to enjoy the outing as well.

Lucky kids.

It sounds like a superb spot for a school. I hope the building of a school doesn't disrupt the wildlife too much.

Websailor

Hi Dmitri and Websailor! I think the birds and bees would be OK with the building and all, it's a fair distance from the site.