At the Edge of the Kalahari: Bush beauty and beasties!

Showing posts with label Bush beauty and beasties!. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Buzzy BEES and other 'b's of our garden today

After yesterday morning's heavy fog, today there is beautiful blue sky, and warm autumn sunshine....one of my favourite times of the year...as its not too hot, not yet too cold and the plants are all still blooming...and that means the bees are buzzing!

Bees are just amazing creatures. And since there seemed to be an abundance of them in the garden this morning, not only did I take the opportunity to pull out the camera, but I was also prompted to brush up on as well as increase my 'bee' knowledge...and so I thought I'd share some of what I learnt online and saw in the garden today...

*There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world - these pictures are of the honey bee

Cosmos flowers are blooming in our garden currently...and the bees are enjoying them

Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica

Bees have hairy eyes...and they have 5 eyes...3 simple eyes and 2 more compound eyes with hexagonal facets

Only female bees can sting

Honey bees fly at a speed of about 25km per hour and can beat their wings 200 times a second

On a ball of onion flowers

An average worker bee lives for only about 5-6 weeks and makes about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, but in that time will fly the equivalent of 1.5 times the circumference of the earth.

Bees actually have 4 wings

Emerging from a Sweet Potato flower with wings sparkling in the morning sunlight

*Their brain is only the size of a grain of sugar or a poppy seed but they can be trained to detect illness in humans, find land mines in Croatia, build perfect efficient hexagons in their hives to store the honey, have 170 odorant receptors and have a sense of smell 50 times stronger than a dog, and can communicate between themselves via a special 'waggle dance' to tell other bees where to find the best food sources

Enjoying a lavender flower

Honey bees are the only insect that make a food consumed by humans

90% of plants need bees for pollination

Honey bees are not born knowing how to make honey, they are taught by the other bees

It's said a bee will collect nectar from 50 to 100 flowers on a flight from the hive, but that might depend on how the flowers are distributed or their size...while I was watching ones on flowers like the one below, I would put the number of flowers visited on one flight as much higher!

Honey and propolis are two of the few places to find the anti-oxidant and anti-imflammatory flavonoid called Pinocembrin

Beeswax is found in many product we use everyday from furniture polish to lipbalm

Bees have two stomachs, one for eating and one for storing nectar

And nectar gathering can mean going down deep tunnels of the flowers on our 'Winter Showers' creeper that is just now coming into spectacular bloom

Bees have long straw-like tongues called a proboscis, which they use to suck up the nectar from flowers, and they make honey by regurgitating digested nectar into honeycomb cells and then fanning it with their wings

You can just see the pollen starting to collect on this bee that is enjoying a flower on our choko vine, and you can also see the proboscis clearly as she sucks up the nectar

And here is another bee even hanging upside down to collect pollen - which you can see is a considerably bigger load size building up on this bee

A worker bee can carry a load of nectar or pollen equal to 80% of her own body weight.

For every kilogram of honey produced, a hive must collect 10 kilograms of pollen

Beehive 'fences' are used in Africa to keep elephants out of villages or fields

And while I was busy watching bees, of course I spotted other bugs, birds and butterflies...all reminders of God's incredible creation, his attention to thoroughness and exact detail, his creative beauty, his awesome power...and care for all these little creatures...and thus we can trust His care for us too.

Bee information sourced from these websites:

https://www.beepods.com/101-fun-bee-facts-about-bees-and-beekeeping/

https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/fascinating-facts/bees

https://www.natgeokids.com/au/discover/animals/insects/honey-bees/

https://beemission.com/blogs/news/22-amazing-facts-about-bees

Friday, March 24, 2023

The Beasts, Birds and Bushes - Part 2 The Birds!

But ask the beasts and they will teach you,

the birds of the heavens and they will tell you,

or the bushes of the earth and they will teach you,

and the fish of the sea will declare to you.

Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?

In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.

Job 12:7-10

Following on from Part 1 of this series, here are some glimpses of some of the birds we were blessed to see and enjoy as we drove around the African bush on our game drives.

In many ways the sightings didn't seem too profound, but I am reminded of different ways each bird has something that should point me once again to their Creator, and just because they may differ in outward appearance doesn't make them more or less valuable in His eyes!

When you drive around the African bush, you never really know what creature you will see, where, or when....so rather than 'organise' the birds into some kind of categories...I'm going to post them basically in order of how and when we saw them so you can 'drive' with us!....

The first...(above and below - yes they are the same....a European/Golden-backed Bee-eater)

but with differing light and depending on whether it is an adult or juevenile they seemed to delight us with almost thinking they were different birds. Even within the one bird species, God had creative fun with variety...

...we had a rear view first up with the colours on the back looking rich and dark, and then on other days we had other views

Then next there was this guy on his old dead branch above the dam water..

...the jet-black Reed Cormorant

Back at our accomodation with only an electric fence between us and the animals we enjoyed the visits of many birds and here is a Kurrichane Thrush

and an African Hoophoe

and a beautiful Grey Lourie otherwise known as a 'Go-away-bird' because its 'song' sounds more like someone saying 'go-away' - some might say he's just a dull grey and doesn't even have a pleasant song, but I think he looks elegantly handsome and stylish!

and a Red-billed Spurfowl with his lovely feather decorations

This cute little guy with the scruffy feathers up-top, is called a Rufous-naped Lark

Fork-tailed Drongo...yes there really is a bird called a 'drongo'!

and the Red-billed Oxpecker, who considers it his right to hitch free rides on the animals and squark his orders at them...when this giraffe didn't seem to pay attention to his squarking, he went right up to beside the giraffes ear! Don't know what he was saying or whether the giraffe understood but the giraffe didn't seem to take much notice except to try to flick his ear to move the pesky noise!

But whether on a giraffe, or zebra or below on the rhino, they serve a purpose of 'de-bugging' the animals...so they get free food along with their free ride!

I wonder what name God calls these guys, as I think we humans weren't very creative when we (at least in English) call them the very unimaginative Water Thick-Knee when I think their features (with that beautiful big eye and facial stripe) are quite striking in their simplicity

Then of course there are the birds of prey and this one is a Ayer's Hawk-Eagle

Here is a Grey Heron (with a leatherback turtle just behind him...that brown smooth 'bump')

then of course there were loads of Masked Weaver nests (above and below) hanging in trees - but sorry didn't even get a photo of the actual yellow bird that makes these intricate constructions (and did you know that the male builds it for the female, and then she comes along and if she doesn't like it she just rips it apart and he has to build a new one!)

This Egyptian Goose stood like a statue for ages as the goslings swam around nearby...she was making sure to keep them out of danger of the hippos swimming nearby!

This little guy was really hard to work out what kind of bird he is...as he looked like he had no tail - or virtually no tail...but there is a tiny wisp of a short tail that almost just looks like another thorn on the tree...but 'he' is actually mostly likely a female Pin-tailed Whydah.

One of the fun parts of being in the bush is seeing all different animals and birds together. It is not a zoo where there are sections of various creatures locked off from others...they all just go wherever they wish.

so above we had Impala grazing in the background while and below Zebra grazing, and yes, those are Sacred Ibis flocks enjoying the water, along with ducks, geese and a White Stork who seems to be giving them all a lecture!....

...and then along came another 'black and white' bird (below)...a Pied Kingfisher

Another bird of prey....a Black Winged Kite

and of course there were sightings of the Helmeted Guinea Fowl

It was pretty special to see this little guy...and manage to get a photo of it...the Crimson-breasted Shrike

...and last of all as we made our way back to the accommodation and past the dam again, there were usually plenty of the White Breasted Cormorant

Oh such variety whether in colour, size, decorative designs, sound and songs. Imagine a world without birds...how boring the world above the ground would be. God filled the air with expressions of his glory for our enjoyment...that would turn our eyes and hearts heavenward to praise their Creator....and that's just what our Game Drive did once again...filled our hearts with joy from our Creator and praise to our Creator....and we trust these photos will give you a taste of that joy and cause you to praise Him too!

Friday, March 03, 2023

The Beasts, Birds and Bushes - Part 1 The Beasts!

But ask the beasts and they will teach you,

the birds of the heavens and they will tell you,

or the bushes of the earth and they will teach you,

and the fish of the sea will declare to you.

Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?

In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.

Job 12:7-10

I am not sure if there are very many places on this earth like an African game reserve to help a person think about beasts, birds and bushes (not sure about the fish part…although maybe I could stretch that to include occupants of water …like a hippopotamus).

Our recent visit to Pilanesburg certainly gave us plenty of opportunity to view God’s creation and be reminded of His handiwork….

And as I recently also read these verses from the book of Job, I was also reminded that these creatures are meant to be point us to worship the LORD [YHWH] as the giver of life, the provider of our each and very breath.

So as you enjoy some of our photographically captured views of God’s beasts, birds and bushes!…may you be prompted to praise and honour Him.

I'll start with

BEASTS IN THE GRASS

...this time there had been excellent rain and the grass everywhere was high and made for many interesting obscured views...there's a reason why the really high grass is called 'Elephant Grass' ....because it can almost hide an elephant!