This is a voluntary working relationship with the City of Cape Town and the Cape Bird Club since 1974.
Another beautiful sunny and cloudless autumn day with a slight breeze from the SE. Barry had walked all the way from home and said he would not be able to help as he had hurt his back picking up a heavy gas cylinder.
This month we had some youthful enthusiasm and energy to help cut down “the forest” as we call it. The 4 young ladies brought a car boot full of gardening tools and implements with them. They learned quickly what was required, and got into action using team work to knock over the trees. They also learned about using herbicide and how it works on the remaining stem. See photos for scale and height of the Port Jackson trees. Bert and Robin worked away quietly going about chopping and sawing down some quite large trees, they also offered their experience of technique on how to chop and saw. They all had a chance using the various implements to see what worked best for them. The girls all said they would sleep well tonight while walking back to the cars. They all agreed and commented on how wonderful it was to get out into the fresh air and do some exercise. They all sit behind computers at work all week.
The preceding week has become a lot cooler over night and most insects have disappeared for this season, which seems to be about a month late compared to previous seasons. We saw no flying or crawling insects today. April and May have been very dry, with the next 10 day rain forecast indicating little prospect of rain. The leaf litter in “the forest” was wet though, it is shaded by the tree canopy during the day and is situated right next to the Keysers River, indicating the humidity must be high here. The treated sewerage pipe line is leaking into the Keysers River again and requires urgent intervention. The air is pungent with sewerage smell 25 metres in a radius of the leak.
The bird species seen today was 13. A pair of Double collared Sunbirds were seen chasing each other around.
Thank you to all for volunteering your enthusiastic input and wanting to make a difference to our natural environment we are privileged to live so close too.
See this link for the past reports of what we have done.
photographs by Gavin Lawson and Emma Bone.
Gavin Lawson.