Here are Jarret, Michael and Elias, all Cape Nature Conservation Field Rangers based at Jonkershoek.
Elias holds what the guys where out here this morning for, the Erica lerouxiae, discovered on Boekenhoutskloof around 1887. The significance of this Erica is that only flowers on Scherpheuwelberg, the mountain behind us.
We have just returned from a mammoth walk, a well organised team of surveyors these gents are, we covered about 15 ha of fynbos, with every stop at an interesting point GPS’d and photographed remarkably quickly. I stupidly did not take my camera, the flowers are going crazy. It was a wiki wiki moment when we did eventually find a flowering Erica lerouxiae, its a tiny flower. Im going to try and get some decent macro shots soon, another thrill was capturing this little beaut:
Some other highlights were finding a Smiths Red Rock Rabbit midden, very close to some of the burrows. And a massive Cape Grysbok midden as well, very fresh droppings daar binne in..
I managed to stock up on some buchu branches for the next unsuspecting bottle of oom Olof Berg, and a low point was not seeing any other reptilitan activity. Its usually now one sees a great deal of snake activity, the hibernation is now over and they are hungry and most probably a bit aggressive. Elias was most upset not to have seen any snakes.
I think the proudest moment came when they thanked our Alien Vegetation crew, saying what a good job they are doing at keeping the mountain clean. Simpie, who is in charge of Alien Clearing for us literally beamed from ear to ear after hearing this.
And just the wonderful feeling of getting out into some fynbos again. Really a stunning way to spend the morning, Franschhoek is looking particularly spectacular today. Theres no wind, the joyful sound of chainsaws munching into all the alien rabble on our mountain slopes and the twittering of birds. Reminds me, must twitter off and post this. Catch us here on Twitter and Facebook.
