This is a voluntary working relationship with the City of Cape Town and the Cape Bird Club since 1978.
Perfect weather for this time of the year, blue sky, light breeze from SE to keep the temps tolerable. On the roads there was plenty of energy with people out and about, probably because it is a long weekend, and the school holidays have started. The estuary mouth was open with plenty of sea water flowing into the vlei. It is full moon tomorrow.
We continued finding seedlings and saplings of Port Jackson. A couple of Manatoka as well. The resident Peacock was calling a few times but I was not able to get close enough to get a good photograph today. Bert has cut down all the large trees now.
Something exciting for us we found a small Milkwood tree in the making, half buried under two large Chrysanthemoides shrubs. It is probably about 5 to 10 years old and is showing signs of flowering on some of the stems. So with all the additional sunlight and air hopefully it should do very well. the small seedling must have been dropped by a bird or bat. Then later just before we were packing up Robin found a seedling Milkwood and we have the gps co-ordinates to pass on the the management. There were no other flowering plants or shrubs to be seen. The surface ground is very dry now and it is only the end of spring.
A long hot summer is forecast in the long term.
There were a few species and variety of insects about, with spider hunting wasps being the most seen.
It was noted that the water channels next to Old Boyes Drive have been recently cleared of all over growth and blockages and the pavement looks very neat and trim, thank you to who ever did this work.
There were 10 species of birds noted including the Peacock.
I would like to thank “The Team” very much for your dedicated, consistent and hard work throughout 2024.
We do need some younger recruits for this job, so if any of you out there are interested in helping to assist the Nature Reserve staff please contact me.
See this link for the past reports of what we have done.
photographs by Gavin Lawson.
Gavin Lawson.
