There was a “tap-tap-tap” noise in the bedroom window and we discovered that a Southern Masked Weaver (Ploceus velatus) was pecking at its own image reflected on the window.
This male bird had, for the last few weeks, been busy building nests, trying to convince its girlfriend that they were nice but failing to do so, as usual in these cases.
As the bird pecked the window for a few hours, we decided to close the curtains to give it a break.
The following day we opened the curtains again, and very soon it returned to fighting with itself in an effort to keep its territory free of male competitors while trying to get his architectural skills improved.
When “Bella”, our Jack Russell bitch, spent about three hours fixed on the generator, we knew that there was trouble in that area of the house.
We checked all around, including the firewood -my candidate- that was next to it without success. We did detect chewed bits of insulating sponge lining on the floor, though.
We decided to open up the generator and have a look.
We expected to find the damage to the sponge lining material but not what we found, a full nest that occuppied half of the free space inside the machine!
I must confess that I saw the nest builder often walking in front of me while seating in the veranda writing but I did not think that the beast would get inside the generator so I chose to share my life with it!
It clearly abused my hospitality and it paid for it as todaya trap was set by Stephen means that there is one less rat in Harare!
Today I needed to go to the garden and, as usual, I went for my Crocs shoes. When I tried to slip my left foot inside I found some resistance and I was surprised and amused to find a best inside. See if you can identify it…
I know that it is not a very good picture but otherwise you would get it too fast!
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I am sure that you have guessed what it was:
Understandably it wanted out of my shoe in a hurry! Soon it was released back to where it come from.
I believe it was an African common toad or guttural toad (Sclerophrys gutturalis) of widespread distribution in Zimbabwe.
We are having a slow start of the rainy season this year but, searching among my pictures, I found this ones that show a beast of some sort from one of Nature’s kingdoms…
See if you can spot it!
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Here it is. As you have realized by now, it is not a giant fern sprouting but a chameleon digging its egg-laying hole with the rolled tail out!
This is the culprit laying, darker after the effort.
A few days back we have started hearing the by now familiar ‘wip-wip-weeu’ that the rain bird or red-chested cuckoo (Cuculus solitarius) make endlessly at the time the rains should start in Zimbabwe. But, where have they been since their appearance last year?
Before I knew much about bird movement and migration, I often asked myself this question. I recall watching in awe widowbirds displaying in Northern Kenya and asking my friend Paul about their whereabouts during the rest of the year. His reply, was that they would go to the Sudd[1], a huge swampy area located in Sudan.
Sudd Swamp -a Flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion in South Sudan. To the left the river/wetland Bahr al-Ghazal connecting to Lake No (top). This photograph was taken during the driest time of year—summer rains generally extend from July through September. Taken from space, May 1993. Credit: NASA (Public domain).
So, every time that someone asks me now where a particular bird is when it is not seen, I say that it is in the Sudd, a very convenient reply!
The truth about the rain bird is that they are intra-African migrants that breed in southern Africa between September and March, although most arrive in mid-October and the majority are gone by the end of April.
The rest of the year they reside in Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries of Central, East and West Africa, including the Sudd wetlands in South Sudan!
Rainbird distribution map. Attribution: BirdLife International (2019) Species factsheet: Cuculus solitarius. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 02/11/2019.
Their preferred habitats are woodlands where they perch high up in the trees. The red-chested cuckoo is usually solitary and it takes on more than a single mate so it is polygamous. Every year they visit our garden where they are occasionally seen while they feed on caterpillars and other insects in the tall msasa trees.
While in Southern Africa -including Zimbabwe- the rain birds practice brood parasitism by breeding through egg-laying in other bird species nests, some twenty-seven of them! The most common hosts are thrushes and robin-chats and the Cape robin-chat (Cossypha caffra), the Cape wagtail (Motacilla capensis) and the white-throated robin-chat (Cossypha humeralis) are the most popular hosts.
The cuckoo’s resemblance with a small bird of prey (like a sparrow hawk for example) scares the future parents from their nests and the cuckoo female lays the egg that, not always, resembles their hosts’. It is estimated that they lay about twenty eggs scattered in various nests every season. Then it is up to the surrogate family to raise the chick.
A very interesting biological phenomenon helps the cuckoo chick to have a head start from the other chicks in the nest: the female cuckoo literally incubates the egg inside her for 24 hours before laying it! [1] This ensures that the chick will hatch first and eliminate the competition at the nest.
Cuckoos are great travellers, capable of flying enormous distances during their migration and, although the red-chested cuckoo covers less distances than others, it uses the same mechanisms to do so. These navigation skills are genetically passed on to their young. The latter stay behind to complete their development while their parents depart but the new generation are able to fly back north on their own to join their parents!
Now we only need good rains while we watch the cuckoos until they depart and then we wait for them to announce the rains in 2020.
We have a few macadamia trees at home that have not yielded very much for luck of water. Last year we had very good rains so we were rewarded with a good harvest and we are busy drying them under the sun so that I can then proceed with the rather time-consuming exercise of opening them.
Harvested nuts being dried.
Dry nuts ready to be cracked.
Macadamia’s shells are extremely hard and, after trying various methods, I have resorted to a vise in the workshop that so far is still working until its thread gives in!
Some time ago we have discovered hollowed out nuts in the garden and we could not believe that an animal could be so powerful as to gnaw such thick and hard shells! Eventually we found lots of empty nuts near a large hole and realized that we had a colony of Southern Giant Pouched Rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) [1].
After a while we stopped seeing them and they disappeared. Apparently they moved off our house one night in a group and entered under the gate of a neighbouring house but I was not a witness to this Pied-piper of Hamelin-like migration!
The empty shells after the rats ate the tasty inside.
More recently, we noted that the nuts we were drying were being peeled from their green outer cover and taken away whole from the sunning box. We “smelled a rat”!
A search up and down the garden was organized and, eventually, a large hole was discovered at the farther corner of the garden. Suspecting that the giant rats were there I set up a camera trap pointing towards the suspected burrow and this is what I got:
We confirmed our fears as the various videos taken showed one rat at a time either entering or leaving the burrow. As I was curious to see how many there were, I decided to put some food hoping that they would gather to feed. Although I got over 180 ten-second videos, I still failed to get a rat gathering! However, I got a few that prompted me to write this post!
I have selected a few that I find interesting and/or funny. Please note that one is eating a few carrot pieces on the ground while the others are chewing a chunk of (delicious for humans at least) butternut hanging from a bush, the idea being that they would not drag it into their nest!
This giant rats are widely distributed in mainly tropical regions of southern Africa, notably Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I first saw them in Monze, Zambia while driving on the main road and I had difficulties stopping my Zambian workers from jumping from the moving vehicle to catch them as they consider them a delicacy!
Later, also in Zambia, Bruno, a colleague from Belgium, invited me with a surprise roast that happened to be delicious and it was a giant rat -as tasty as a piglet- with baked potatoes (tasting like potatoes!)! Giant rats were very abundant in that area at the time and I am sure contributed to food security of the village where the project was based.
Giant pouched rats are named after their large cheek pouches and they are only distantly related to the true rats. Recent studies place them in the family Nesomyidae and not in the Muridae as they used to be [2].
They are able to produce up to 10 litters of one to five young per annum and they are nocturnal and omnivorous with special taste for palm nuts and, as we have experienced, also for macadamia nuts. Interestingly, they are hind gut fermenters and coprophagous, producing pellets of semi-digested food that are consumed.
They are not only easily tamed as pets but useful for detecting land mines as they have an excellent sense of smell, particularly sniffing TNT while being too light to detonate the mines! But this is not all. They are also being trained to detect tuberculosis by smelling sputum samples. This procedure is faster than the normal diagnostic test and remarkably increases the sample processing. [3]
So a few disappeared nuts ended up producing an interesting story and I am now positive that we have a colony of rats (being fed on expensive macadamia nuts) that could potentially be bred to remove mines and improve human lives!
I regret now having eaten one (and liked it!) and I will not do it again!
[1] I am not a rat taxonomist so I base my identification more on distribution and abundance than on their morphology. The other possible species in Zimbabwe would be C. gambianus but the whole pouched rat taxonomy is under review. See: Olayemi, A. et. al. (2012). Taxonomy of the African giant pouched rats (Nesomyidae: Cricetomys): molecular and craniometric evidence support an unexpected high species diversity. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 165, 700–719.
Today, while walking in the garden, we spotted this beast. It is not easy to see as it was already late when I took the pictures…
If you do not see it, follow the telephone wire…
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In any case, here it is. What I believe to be one of our rat control team: a Spotted Eagle-Owl (Bubo africanus). We did have years back a lady tenant that used to rehabilitate injured owls so perhaps this is one of their offspring? Whatever, it is amazing to have them in the garden!
Regret that the image is a bit blurred but these are crepuscular birds and pictures are challenge!
After a few weeks of silence, I return to blogging for one day to let you have this beast for you to search for.
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I am sure it was not that hard. It is the first chameleon we find this year in our Harare garden. I think it came out a bit early as it is still quite cold and it was in good condition but moving slowly like the bushsnob in cold weather!
From the rather prolific garden in Harare for you to find:
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A young praying mantis doing its job in insect control.
Closely related to cockroaches and termites, there are over 2,400 species of mantises -both flying and flightless- worldwide. They feed on other insects but not necessarily all of them damaging to agriculture!. Larger species can even hunt small reptiles and birds and about 30% of wild males get cannibalized by their sexual partners.
They have flexible necks that enables them to turn their heads 180 degrees, a feat that no other insect can do and, although they have two large and bulging eyes, they only have one “ear” located in their abdomen so their hearing is limited.
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A Bushsnob out of Africa 
