Time to catch up a bit, this’ll be a long post, I haven’t had internet for just over a week, but I have found plenty of critters.
On my last night at the old camp I came across a juvenile
Lamprophis fuliginosus, very light khaki-brown colour.
Long horn Beetle -
Ceroplesis poggei malepicta
Stick mantis -
Hoplocoryphella grandis – eating an antlion
Stone Katydid –
Lamarckiana sp
The new camp is roughly 90 km north east of the previous one. The terrain is mostly Kalahari thornveld (very sandy grasslands with thickets of Acacia, Mopani and other species of low growing trees) and is fairly heavily grazed by cattle and sheep.
Next to the camp I have a small granite ridge (with very few rocks to turn over sadly).
Herps
Common rough-scaled lizard -
Ichnotropis Squamulosa 
This one may be a juvenile?
What I think is Bradfields dwarf gecko –
Lygodactylus bradfieldii (although this would be out of it's known range)
Kalahari ground gecko –
Colopus wahlbergi wahlbergi
Kalahari tree skink –
Trachylepis spilogaster showing distinctive leg spots.
Bushveld lizard -
Heliobolus lugubris adult
This juvenile Boomslang –
Dispholidus typus popped out of a tree stump I was sitting in front of having a cigarette, it was quite calm while I snapped a few shots, and didn’t struggle at all on the hook when I moved it out of the camp. It had recently eaten, and since it was on the same small stump I found the
Lygodactylus, I presume that was dinner.
Flap-necked Chameleon – Chameleo dilepis that was found sleeping on a dead branch, very exposed, and was there again the next morning allowing me to get some more pictures
The same evening that I found the chameleon, and the
Colopus (within 15m of each other) a few metres further on I came across the first of three Bibron’s burrowing asp,
Atractaspis bibronii. It was fairly average sized, very clear contrast between the dorsal and ventral colours and immediately I shone my light on it, it started thrashing around in that strange dystonic jerky movement they have. I was only able to get very poor pictures of it as it wouldn’t lie still at all. The second one I found about 50m from the first one, was slightly larger and slightly more co-operative, although it kept wanting to go under my boots.
The third one was really large, and rather more placid, and I was able to get some decent shots. I have included one with my pocket hook stick for size reference, the stick measured later has a 740mm handle length.
The bird life around here is slightly different, with a lot more savannah birds than where I previously was
Burchell’s Sand grouse –
Pterocles burchellii – large flocks of these noisy birds fly around every morning coming to the local cattle watering post (200m from the camp).
Violet-eared waxbill –
Uraegrinthus granatinus
I also have several raptors which I need to first ID.
The same night I found the Bibron’s, I saw this pair of huge Giant Mantis’s –
Sphodromantis gastrica, in a tree, the clearly gravid female is enjoying feasting on the male.
Returning to my tent the same evening I was quite horrified to find this huge (100mm) Jerusalem/Sand cricket walking backwards and forwards in front of my door. These things just freak me out for some reason.
There are a lot of Community nest spiders –
Stegodyphus sp – in the bushes and trees here. The webs are very shabby with all the dust in the air.
Batozonellus sp wasp on the hunt for spiders. Really large and noisy flyers they seem to be quite common here along with several other spider-hunting wasps. These are known to snatch
Nephila sp out of their webs.
There are a lot of Monarch butterflies around here for some reason, and pretty much nothing else as far as they go, except for one other little Copper that I’ve seen.
We had a small thunderstorm here the one afternoon after which the temperature dropped quite a bit (which was fantastic as the average daily temps are around 38-41C and we’re in dark green canvas military tents with NO ventilation or aircon…). I was hoping that the rain would bring out some more critters and went for a long walk that evening. I found two
Tomopterna, turning over a rock next to the dirt road I found what I think is a Spotted sand lizard –
Pedioplanis lineoocellatus lineocellatus (may be
P. namaquensis but I doubt it)
I also came across this Brown Hyena,
Hyaena brunnea, carcass not far from the camp. I knew Hyenas were around as one chewed through our water pipe from the borehole the one evening. There was no obvious cause of death, and I suspect it died fairly recently, as there was still a fairly large amount of soft tissue, although it was very much desiccated with the heat we have been having here. Oddly enough very little appears to have been scavenged by anything other than insects.
One evening the guys called me out for a Puff adder –
Bitis arietans – that was making its way across the camp. I hooked it into a bucket, a nice healthy male about 90cm in length, during the night it regurgitated a fairly large rodent.
The guys also brought me this Kalahari round headed worm lizard –
Zygaspis quadrifrons – apparently they have found quite a lot amongst the roots of the bushes they are digging out (reportedly something like a
Typhlops sp as well that I did not see). I was hoping to find more of the fossorial species out here, so this one was quite a nice find.
Interestingly, yesterday I dug out two under the same Mopani tree roots, one wholly pink, the other wholly purple. I am not sure if this is some kind of sexual dimorphism, it isn’t mentioned in the text I have with me.
On Tuesday whilst digging out some tree stumps I found this Delalande’s beaked blind snake –
Rhonotyphlops lelandi. It was rather difficult to get shots of it on a natural background as it just wouldn’t lie still, eventually I got it to curl around my thumb and got a couple of close-ups. I am not sure if this is common to all blind snakes, certainly none that I have ever previously caught, but my gosh this one emitted something really foul that made my hands stink. I am sure Bernice would be familiar with the smell with her skeletonising experiments but it really smelled like rotten fish.
We still have a large amount of stumps that need removing in the camp, so hopefully I will find some more burrowers!
We have had quite a bit of rain here since Monday, I don’t have a gauge but I would estimate close on 80-100mm if not more, which is lovely for this place as they have been hit hard by the drought. Tuesday night the amphibians were out in force, with
Toads (x6)
sp 1
sp 2
Rain frogs I think
Breviceps adspersus (x5 incl one VERY large female)
This little breviceps was determined to try and stuff at least one of these driver ants into his mouth, but he couldn’t “walk and bite” it the same time, so every time that he stopped to try and grab one, they moved away and the *chase* was on all over again. It was quite entertaining to see the amount of effort he put into getting a meal, especially considering all the smaller bugs that he just walked right over with his eyes on the prize. I did find one small toad with half a driver ant sticking out its mouth, it was only slightly bigger than the breviceps and you could see it was struggling to finish swallowing, I have no doubt that it managed though.
Sand frogs -
Tomopterna sp (not sure if they are different species, they certainly had different markings. None were calling though...)
1
2
This one looks more like
Pyxiecephalus sp but they were the same size as the
Tomopterna
I do not have any amphib texts with me so if anyone can confirm the ID's I'd appreciate it.
I was hoping with all the amphib activity that there would be some appropriate snakes out on the hunt but I couldn’t find anything other than the frogs hopping about.
Removing more Mopani stumps (where all the fossorial sp have been found) We turned up two Striped blind legless skinks –
Typhlosaurus lineatus lineatus one was unfortunately mortally wounded so I’ve taken that as a wet specimen, the other much larger of the two was very healthy and active.
We also turned up another 5
Z quadrifrons, as well as another two
R lelandi
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