This is a voluntary working relationship with the City of Cape Town and the Cape Bird Club since 1978.
Yesterday Cape Town sweltered in the mid to high 30 degree C temperatures with little to no wind. This morning was similar and thank goodness a breeze from the SW was blowing to help keep us cool, when we had arrived. The sky was blue with the odd small clouds near the mountains. The first pond is almost dry as seen in the photo. There were a few Scout sailing boats using the SW wind to effect practising their craft.
We are back at the Promenade Road site where a number of Port Jackson, Rooikrans and Brazilian Pepper trees and shrubs have taken hold from the seed stock from many years gone by. Bert, Robin and I got stuck in. Bert commented he should have brought his large axe as it was needed for a few of the trees.
There were plenty of insect species of all sorts seen today, dragonflies, grasshoppers, flies, wasps, butterflies.
It is very encouraging to see the large variety of plant species in this section compared to the first time we came here about 25 years ago when this section was an invasive forest of trees about 4 metres high. It is gratifying to see the biodiversity of species which now thrive and survive here. Hacking has its rewards if one is consistent in removing the invasive species. The only flowering species we saw today were the Aspalathus arida in a small area where they thrive.
There were very few birds seen to day, probably due to the weather conditions of the past days. A total of 6 species seen.
The estuary mouth was closed. The salinity levels are very high right back into the Rutter Road pond where Barry caught a good size Leervis (Garrick) during the week. For most of the years I have been associated with Zandvlei the Rutter Road Pond has been a freshwater pond with never a Leervis caught there to my knowledge. The fishermen at Zandvlei are notorious about keeping their catches secret. In 2016 see the dead carp being removed from the Rutter Road Pond. These are freshwater species, intolerant to saline conditions.
We do need some younger volunteers for this job, so if any of you out there are interested in helping you are assisting the Nature Reserve staff who cant cover all the bases they are responsible for. Contact me if you are interested.
See this link for the past reports of what we have done.
photographs by Gavin Lawson.
Gavin Lawson.
