PlanetJune by June Gilbank

This is the fourth post in my monthly series on the fascinating nature I encounter here in South Africa.

I’ve seen so much wildlife that it’s hard to keep this to one post per month – I still have photos from months ago that I haven’t had a chance to show you yet! I’ll try to come up with some kind of theme for each post, to help me select which photos to include. My theme this month is giants – and I have a very varied selection that fits into this category! I’ll show them by size…

I’ve been hearing something large that buzzes as loudly as a hummingbird flying around my garden, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until I finally saw one on the ground. This is one big beetle (about an inch long):

It’s a garden fruit chafer (pachnoda sinuata), from the same family as scarabs and dung beetles. Apparently, it’s a pest because it feeds on fruit and flowers. All I know is it gives me a fright when one zooms right past my head!

This is the caterpillar of the Cape Lappet Moth. Although they are about 4″ long, seeing one by itself like this isn’t too scary – it’s actually quite pretty, with a purple patch on its head and soft coppery hairs on each side. But you’ll commonly see dozens swarming together on a tree trunk, and that’s a far creepier sight…

The porcupine is the largest rodent in Africa, sometimes reaching over 2 feet long! We saw these Cape Porcupines at World of Birds – although they are common here, they’re also nocturnal, so there’s not much chance of me getting a photo of one in the wild. Just look at those quills!

Imagine going for a walk along the river by your house and seeing this giant coming in to land (there’s a pigeon there too, for scale – it has a 9ft wingspan)…

It is, of course, a Great White Pelican. At 160cm long, it’s as long as I am tall! We watched it waddling around on the river bank, preening, and then swimming around for ages with its big feet visible behind it in the water as it slowly paddled. Then a second one flew down to join it, looking more like a giant pterosaur than a bird in flight. It’s just amazing to see this kind of thing!

We visited Rondevlei Nature Reserve, only a short drive from our house and home to around 230 species of birds. We saw over 35 species on our visit, but this vlei (lake) is actually also home to a family of hippos! We spent a while looking for them, but hippos usually stay underwater during the day, and only emerge to graze in the evening.

We didn’t see any sign of a hippo except these tracks they have trampled (unfortunately, it’s not that obvious from my photo, but the grass in the middle, between the bushes, is the hippo trail). Maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of an actual hippo next time we visit…

At this time of year, Southern Right Whales come close to shore, to breed and give birth. We were just on our way back from Rondevlei, when we saw what was unmistakeably a whale tail, sticking up out of the water. Our first whale! I assumed it would be about the size of a beluga whale; it was only later when I got home that I discovered that this whale is 50ft (15m) long, and the tail alone is around 5m wide – no wonder it was so easy to spot (hence the poor photo quality; we were actually a very long way away). The whale kept its tail pointed up out of the water for ages – this is apparently a known behaviour called ‘sailing’.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my latest wildlife update. Life is certainly very different for me here, and not without its challenges and frustrations, but, as a nature lover, it’s wonderful for me to see all these animals and birds that I imagined I’d only ever see in zoos or on wildlife documentaries, and I’m not taking that for granted!

This is the third post in my monthly series on the fascinating nature I encounter here in South Africa.

It turns out that our new house is just a few minutes’ walk from the Liesbeeck River, which is full of waterbirds. This is where I saw the kingfisher you may remember from a few months back. Look how lovely it is!

I think the rest of these pictures will speak for themselves, so I’ll keep my commentary short and sweet. Just remember that it’s the middle of winter here at the moment and, while it’s not sunny like this every day, you can see (above) how beautiful it is here when the sun does come out! Enjoy…

A family of Egyptian Geese – these are the common geese that you see everywhere here (makes a change from Canada Geese!) They have distinctive red patches around their eyes and honk very loudly.

Here’s a pair of Blacksmith Plovers (or Lapwings) – I took more photos, but they all involved, ahem, mating… so you get the boring family-safe photo here

I love this photo of a Hadeda Ibis – look at the iridescence on the wing.

These are a different type of ibis: the African Sacred Ibis.

We see two common types of gull; this cute little Hartlaub’s Gull, and…

… the much larger Kelp Gulls.

And two types of egret! Here’s a Little Egret (note the yellow feet)…

…and a Cattle Egret. See the buff-coloured plumes? That’s breeding plumage; the feathers are all white the rest of the year.

At first I thought this bird was a cormorant, but it’s actually an African Darter drying its wings after swimming (it swims with its entire body underwater).

Here’s a real cormorant (a Whitebreasted Cormorant). Now I see them together, they don’t look very similar at all…

And a gratuitously scenic shot to end with: Table Mountain (taken from the riverbank).

I hope you enjoyed this month’s African interlude! Are you bored yet, or shall I keep going with these wildlife posts? I have lots more I can show you, but only if you’re interested…

Time to draw the winner of my July ‘Review and Win’ contest… and it’s another dinosaur review! This time it’s from Monica B, with her review of my Tyrannosaurus Rex pattern:

This is my favorite dinosaur pattern, simple, quick and Very well made! I have made several of them already, as well as other PlanetJune dinos! June makes her patterns very user friendly. I recommend PlanetJune to family!

Congratulations, Monica – I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

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Today I visited the South Africa Post Office for the first time, to mail out my first batch of orders since reopening for shipping. I was totally surprised to be handed a sheet of stamps – the old gummed type – I haven’t seen them for years! And there wasn’t even one of those wet sponge thingys, so I had to actually lick 26 stamps so I could mail out my orders while I was at the post office. Yuck! I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day. The things I do for my customers…

I bought extra stamps so I hopefully won’t have to go through that experience again, and they are so pretty I thought I’d share them with you. They seem to have two stamp ranges going at the moment. The first is called “The Luminous Beauty of South African Beadwork” and it shows beaded handcrafts:

And the second is called “South African Sea and Coastal Birds” and each stamp shows a different sea bird, including the African Penguin:

Crafting and wildlife – it’s like they knew I was coming

This is the second post in my monthly series on the fascinating nature I encounter here in South Africa.

Fair warning: if you hate all insects and reptiles, you might want to close this window and not read the rest of my post.

Although I already have some interesting birds lined up for my next post, I’m going to focus today on cold-blooded creatures I’ve spotted in my new garden. Don’t worry, there are no spiders or snakes in this post, I promise! But I’d like to share a few very cool and unusual creatures with you, if you’re up for it.

Ready to continue?

First up, something very exciting to me: geckos! Of course, I have a crocheted one already, but that’s not the same as this:

I think this is a Marbled Leaf-toed Gecko. They are very small; only about 3 or 4 inches long. We have at least 3 of them (and probably more) living at the bottom of our garden. They eat lots of small insects, so I’m very happy to have them around! This one is a bit camouflaged hiding amongst the fallen leaves in the above photo, but it’s the best I’ve been able to get so far – they usually scuttle for cover before I can get into range, so we hear them more than we see them.

And next… you won’t believe this one…

A Praying Mantis!! Amazing! (She’s on the outside of the window, by the way, or I might be a little less excited and a little more freaked out.) She’s quite small, as mantids go; only about 2 or 3 inches long, and she mostly just sits around on the palm fronds outside our window, like this:

One day we saw her devour, over several hours, a baby gecko almost as long as she is – that was fascinatingly horrifying to see, but we couldn’t stop checking back to see how much of the poor gecko was left. I did take a photo, but you mustn’t look unless you’re sure you want to… Sure? Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you: praying mantis eating.

And finally, when we first moved in, I wondered what these disgusting-looking blobs were up under the eaves of our roof:

The answer is quite magical: it turns out we have a butterfly pupation station on one wall of our house! These spiky-looking Garden Acraea (acraea horta) caterpillars (below, left) climb up the wall to the safety of the eaves, where they pupate and develop a patterned chrysalis (below, right) while they undergo their metamorphosis:

After a time, they abandon their cocoons and emerge as beautiful butterflies:

Apparently these Garden Acraea are one of the most common butterflies in Cape Town, but that doesn’t make it any less special for me to be able to watch their transformation in my own garden! In the photo below, you can see that their top wings are transparent and only the lower set have the spotted patterning – cool, huh? On my to do list: find a native butterfly-friendly plant so we can encourage more pretty butterflies to visit.

I hope this post hasn’t made you too squeamish! I just thought these wild visitors to my garden were too interesting to ignore. I’ll be back to the pretty warm-blooded animals and birds for my next wildlife report, I promise

I have the amazing opportunity now I live in South Africa to experience a different side of nature; one that most of you will probably only see in wildlife documentaries, if at all. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I occasionally deviate from the crafty nature of my blog to share some photos of the plants, birds and animals I see! As these will probably be inspiration for my future crochet designs, I don’t think it’s totally off-topic, and I hope you’ll enjoy a few glimpses into the nature of South Africa. (Please just skip these posts if they don’t interest you – I promise they won’t take over the blog!)

In this first post, I’ll show you some of our garden birds…

Wild Guineafowl roam freely everywhere – these are part of a group of about a dozen that patrol the grounds of our flats and the surrounding streets. They look a bit like small turkeys and they bob their heads quickly as they walk (as captured by the motion blur in my photo). Their loud call sounds like a squeaky bike wheel, and when several start up, it gets pretty raucous…

The Cape Sugarbird feeds on the nectar in protea flowers, as shown here (this type of protea is called a Sugarbush and produces copious nectar which can be used as a natural sweetener). The female (above) is nice-looking, but the male is the real stunner…

…his tail feathers are twice as long as his entire body! Very impressive when he’s sitting like this, but it looks like hard work to fly dragging those feathers behind him…

There’s nothing in this picture for scale, but ibis are very large! I’ve only seen them in zoos before, so having them as a common garden visitor is pretty amazing – we see them from our window, pulling worms out of the lawn with those long beaks. This type of ibis is called Hadeda (rhymes with la-di-la!) and is named for its loud call of “ha-ha-haadada”. When a group fly over or sit in a tree shouting that in unison, you really know about it!

Larger than the common starling you’re probably familiar with, the Red-Winged Starling looks fairly unexciting, until it takes flight… Do you see that edge of rusty red-brown on its wing? Their entire wings are that colour when in flight, so they look much more interesting as they fly by than they do when they land. I haven’t been able to capture that in a photo though

I know doves aren’t exactly unusual, but they are so sweet I thought you might like to see one anyway. There are two common types of dove here: the Cape Turtle Dove and the little colourful one pictured here, the Laughing Dove.

I first saw White-Eyes on holiday in Hawaii, so they feel like a very tropical bird to me. Very small and shy, the Cape White-Eyes are very hard to photograph because they don’t stay in plain sight for long. This is the best photo I’ve been able to capture so far, but I’ll keep trying

There’s so much more amazing wildlife here. I’d love to write more posts like this and share what I see with you, but only if I have an interested audience: I don’t want to bore you! If you’ve enjoyed this post, please leave a comment so I know you’d like to see more…

Will I ever get caught up with everything?! I’ve just drawn April’s Review and Win contest winner… Taking the bonus entries for ‘first’ reviews into account, this month’s lucky winner is Rebecca P, with her review of my ever-popular AquaAmi Sea Turtle pattern:

I love this pattern, it is easy to follow and allows the crocheter to create a beautiful turtle. It is also the cutest and most realistic turtle I have been able to find.

Congratulations, Rebecca, I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

While I’m here, I thought I’d share a couple more Cape Town photos with you. Remember the ugly round tower block I’m living in at the moment? It was only when we visited Signal Hill and looked across the city towards Table Mountain that we fully appreciated what an eyesore the 3 towers really are: here’s a pic of them rising above the city and spoiling the view of the mountain:

We’re staying in the middle one. At least it won’t be for too long, and we have the spectacular views to enjoy while we’re up here

And one more point of interest: the currency (South African Rands, ZAR) has pictures of the Big 5 animals on it – isn’t that cool?! (Apart from the hunting connotations, but I’ll choose to ignore that.) It’s much easier to remember that R10 is a rhino instead of some random historical figure I’ve never heard of, like on most banknotes

FYI, the banknote animals are:
R10 Rhinoceros
R20 Elephant
R50 Lion
R100 Cape Buffalo
R200 Leopard

Just don’t ask me why they are in that order – I have no idea!

We’ve finally made it to South Africa! This is the view that greeted us as we stepped out of the airport – see the sunrise over Table Mountain in the background. A good start to our new life!

Just getting here has been an adventure in itself. We’ve had difficulties every step of the way: from selling the house in time; to getting our residency & work permits; to getting Maui’s travel paperwork in order – every possible thing always looked like it wasn’t going to work out, and then, at the very last possible minute, we got it sorted. It’s been the most stressful few months of my life, but, in what feels like a miracle, Dave, Maui, and I have all made it through safely and here we are, living in South Africa!

Just to give you an idea of the stress we’ve gone through, here are some highlights of the past week (skip this if you’re not interested in my travel adventures):

• We were 2 days away from losing our Canadian Citizenship application because the South African consulate had kept our passports for longer than anticipated, so our citizenship tests hadn’t gone forward to be approved by the judge, and the judge was now away for longer than we had left in Canada. I finally found an amazing lady at the citizenship office who went over and above for us and managed to get a judge in Ottawa to submit the approval by fax. We became Canadian citizens the day before we left, and, although we didn’t have time to enjoy it on the day – we had to head off to Guelph to get Maui’s export permit as soon as we left the ceremony – I’d just like to say that I’m very happy and proud to be able to say that I AM CANADIAN! I miss you already, Canada.
• When we arrived at the airport on Saturday, we took Maui to the cargo centre to be dropped off. I thought this was just going to be a formality – we had our official South African cat import permit, our official Canadian cat export permit, and the vet certificate to prove he’s healthy and doesn’t need to be quarantined on arrival. But it turns out they also wanted Maui’s rabies vaccination certificate because we were travelling via the UK, which has extremely strict policies on rabies, and apparently the vet certificate listing all his vaccinations wasn’t sufficient. The rabies form was currently somewhere inside our shipping container, already on its way to South Africa. What on earth could we do if they didn’t accept Maui?! After hours of stress and tears (on my part) I tried to phone our vet’s office, which was (extremely luckily) still open at 4pm on a Saturday, and they agreed to fax the missing paperwork directly to the British Airways World Cargo office where we were waiting. Fixed!
• The first leg of our long journey was fine: we arrived at Heathrow and spent 9 boring hours waiting for the next flight. We boarded on time, and then spent the next 5 hours sitting in the plane on the tarmac in London – apparently there was a problem with the plane, and they were trying to fix it so we could take off. As the engines weren’t running, neither was the plane’s air conditioning, and we were all sweltering inside the cabin. They handed out cups of water, but we had no dinner, and they wouldn’t let us out of the plane. At midnight, they finally decided we weren’t going anywhere, and let us off the plane. They found hotels for all of us, but it was 2am before we got there, aand the hotel forced us to check out by 10am, even though our replacement flight wasn’t until 5.30pm. Dave checked on what would happen to poor Maui – apparently he would be looked after by quarantine vets overnight but there was no way we’d be allowed to see him, so we headed off for our hotel and a few hours’ sleep.

After another exciting day spent sitting in the comfort-free chairs at Heathrow, the replacement flight was uneventful, and we arrived at Cape Town airport in time to see the view at the top of this post! We collected Maui – in an amazing turn of events giving everything else that’s gone wrong, that involved nothing more than going to three buildings, signing forms and paying a fee, and then they handed over his crate.

I’d just like to say that Maui is the strongest, bravest cat in the world. He was immediately very happy to see us, and after a long drink, he seemed none the worse for wear for having been crated and away from us for 60 hours – poor baby! He’s settled into our new flat like a champ, and now he’s king of the world, sitting on the windowsill and surveying his new domain, and watching strange and unusual birds flying past the window. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have my boy back safely after all these adventures he’s gone through.

Maui! And, oh yeah, some city in the background…

The amazing view from our flat. Cape Town is looking pretty good so far

The only real downside is that we don’t have internet in this flat. I’m trying to get a Blackberry, but they won’t give me a contract as I don’t have a salary or 3 months’ South African bank records – I hope we can find a solution because it’s driving me crazy! Today, we’re visiting Dave’s new workplace, the Astronomical Observatory, and I can borrow their wireless while I’m here and post this. So, if I take a while to respond to emails etc, that’s why – please have some patience while I try to sort this out. If you need crochet patterns, please order through my fully automated shop and not Etsy, so you don’t have to wait for your patterns, and I don’t have to pay for internet to email them to you!

Once I fix the internet situation, I think I’m going to enjoy it here in Cape Town. I know this sounds lame (hello, internet addiction!) but I feel like I’m missing a limb when I can’t get online: not only am I in a strange country where I know nobody, but I’m cut off from my only link to my friends and family. I’ll lose that lonely feeling when I’m back online again, hopefully very soon.

And so begins my South African adventure…