Here are a few shots of a trip to S. Africa undertaken by my PhD student Axel Barlow and myself. The aim: to collect samples from a range of widespread S. African snakes for a comparative phylogeography project. Oh, and to have lots of fun messing with the local fauna.
The places visited where we did field work (as opposed to hanging around with local herpers and sampling captive collections - those photos would make another very long post) are shown on this map:
The trip started in Cape Town. Our B&B garden generated some of the first herps, including this nice
Bradypodion pumilum:
Even some larger snakes still survive in larger city parks and commons:
Mole snake -
Pseudaspis cana - Africa's answer to
Pituophis.
A poke around the Kirstenbosch botanic gardens, at the foot of Table Mountain, generated further cool finds:
Cordylus nigerOh, and this cheeky little fellow:
Juvenile Cape cobra -
Naja nivea - full of nonsense and attitude.
From Cape Town, we joined Tony Phelps (armata on this forum) and other friends for a few days in the West Coast National Park, north of Cape Town. The habitat is coastal fynbos, a kind of heathland, extremely rich in endemic plants.
Some habitat shots:
A cool plant.
No, I am not a botanist.
Opisthophthalmus merceri with babies - very cute!
Less cute: A
Parabuthus. Both pretty common in the Park (and elsewhere)
S. Africa is Skink Central - Cape skink,
Trachylepis capensis
For the scolecophidian fans, here is
Rhinotyphlops lalandei - blind snake. The scars on the side of the neck look distinctly like ant bites.
One of our key targets: egg-eater,
Dasypeltis scabra - very cool little snakes.
However, you don't go all the way to S. Africa to see small colubrids. Where are Africa's big bad snakes?
Ah... check that thick log on the road:
Rectilinear locomotion: it does what it says on the box! Puff adder,
Bitis arietans, a gravid female (taken with available light in almost total darkness, 15 mins after sunset at 6400 ISO, hence poor quality)
Nice camo!
This is the kind of photo for which Hexarmor gloves come in handy!
Well, we weren't just there to play: scale clipping for DNA sampling.
And, to help wake myself up:
My grandma, what big fangs you have!
And if that does not wake you up, then seeing this crossing the road in front of you in broad daylight will:
Some Cape cobras are so obvious that they don't need to be on the road to be very visible from a car:
This one was spotted crawling around in the bush 10 metres from the road, from a moving car, by Axel. Who needs camouflage anyway?
Well, some species like their camouflage...
From the West Coast to the Little Karoo around Oudtshoorn, where Tony Phelps is based
In the background the Swartberg mountains.
A good place for tortoises: Parrot-beaked tortoise (
Homopus areolatus)
Angulate tortoise (
Chersina angulata) - these guys are extremely common all over the place in much of the Western Cape.
Another night on the road, another puff adder. Having had two trips to SA without getting a good look at a wild one (except for a tail disappearing into a wall), this trip improved things considerably.
Onwards to Port Alfred, Eastern Cape, where we had the run of a farm for a day.
Pachydactylus maculatus - apparently these often make their homes in old giant land snail (
Achatina) shells
It's well over 30 degrees, that tin is far too hot to touch comfortably, so there could not possibly be a snake under it, could there?
Actually there could - another puffie!
Gorgeous head pattern! Anyone who thinks puff adders are dull and boring needs their head looking at.
Bushland north of Grahamstown. Due to extreme heat and drought, we did not see much in the area.
But this Bibron's thick-toed gecko (
Chondrodactylus bibroni) was a cool find.
Onward to East London, and this was found under a roof tile next to an abandoned building:
Spotted skaapsteker,
Psammophylax rhombeatusFrom the parched landscape of the cape to the uplands of western KwaZulu-Natal, around Nottingham Road:
Lycodonomorphus rufulus - brown water snake
Pseudocordylus melanotus subviridis - Drakensberg crag lizard
A very cute baby Rinkhals,
Hemachatus haemachatusAnd onward, into the northern Free State, around Bloemhof, a town on the Northwestern Province side of the Vaal River.
Vaal River flood plain.
Not much in the way of herps (although we saw but failed to catch a boomslang, and caught a puff adder and a red-lipped snake,
Crotaphopeltis hotamboeia, that we ran out of time to photograph), but some interesting inverts:
Baboon spider
Tree velvet spider (
Gandanameno sp.)
Our contender for the "World's Worst Public Toilet" contest - Bothaville, Free State. I should stress that this is actually very unusual in S. Africa - it's actually very easy in most places to find clean facilities, much more so than in many European countries.
And back to Cape Town...
... through the vastness of the Karoo...
... and the majestic Cape Fold Mountains....
... for Axel to find a little slug eater,
Duberria lutrix,
and for a last sampling session, this time involving a rinkhals caught on a farm at Elim by the owner. Rinkhals are fairly rare in the Western Cape, but they are stunners:
The last thing I want to acknowledge is simply the incredible help, hospitality and generosity we received from countless herpers in South Africa in our quest for snakes and samples: I have never experienced so much willingness to help, so many open doors, and so much warmth. I have not named most people in this post, because I know I would forget some, but my warmest gratitude goes out to all of them.
Thanks for looking!
Wed 30 Jun - 17:06
wow thanks for sharing, good to get some really nice impressions of SA.
Thank you for sharing, Wolfgang.
