Rain

Last night we received our first good dowsing of rain.

Although the runoff seeped in to flood my kitchen, and the pets took fright at the golf-ball sized ice-chunks crashing on the roof, we're now all celebrating (a doubling of chocolate consumption).
  

Well, perhaps all isn't strictly accurate, since the composition of my household has undergone a change.

 

Last night all my resident red toads (eight, it turned out) lined up at the door to be let outside. As they hopped off into the rain to do their froggy thing, I felt I should be waving a handkerchief or something. But as they say, 'Nature abhors a vacuum', and I now have several foam nest frogs calling the place home.

 

A foam nest frog (Chiromantis xerampelina) enjoying the view from my curtain rail.


After one light shower of rain last week, the bush is already edging its way toward green. Its absolute faith in the coming of rain terrifies me. I guess I spent too long in the Kalahari where all the plants lie doggo until there's been enough rainfall for them to sprout, bloom and set seed all in one hit.

With everything breaking out in leaf and the air scented with flowers, the first summer migrants are starting to wing in. I heard a red-chested cuckoo calling for the first time this morning (cause for nervousness, no doubt, in all hairy caterpillars, thrushes and robin-chats).

Red-chested cuckoo (Cuculus solitaries). Photo by Johann du Preez.

I'm now going to inflict on you photos of some of the flowers that are currently burgeoning (sorry, I can't resist them).

The mopane pomegranate (Rhigozum zambesiacum) pins its sweet-scented flowers on a stark thicket of bare twigs.

The weeping boer-bean (Schotia brachypetala) literally drips nectar, attracting a deafening buzz of insects. Around here, these trees grow almost exclusively on termite mounds, sucking up the moisture generated by these little control freaks (a mound is not a home unless it's humidity-controlled!). Every man and his dog (well maybe not his dog) eats this tree: starlings, monkeys and baboons scoff the flowers, antelope nibble the leaves, and both monkeys and people chomp the carb-rich beans (apparently you roast the pods). Oh, and black rhinos (who've presumably been partying) like to gnaw the bark, which is said to cure heartburn and hangovers.

The red bushwillow (Combretum apiculatum) is a handy plant for practical jokers. The seeds, although consumed by birds, are poisonous to humans, causing prolonged hiccupping.

Natal plane (Ochna natalitia). These lovely perfumed flowers last only a day or so. Then they fall to create drifts of golden petals.

The blood flower or fireball lily (Scadoxus multiflorus) is utterly bizarre. Once a year it sprouts a single flower head (26cm/10" across) comprised of about 200 individual flowers. Laden with alkaloids, the plant snuffs out livestock, and is used to coat poison arrows in Cameroon and Gabon, and as a fishing poison in Guinea and Nigeria.

Another species of plane (Ochna spp.) that I've yet to identify.

The migratory yellow-billed kites (Milvus aegyptius) began to rock up last week. Each morning at dawn, as I drive to the study site, I follow one skimming along the road – kilometre after kilometre - searching for beasties that were flattened in the night.
Photo by Matt MacGillivray.