Skyentists

This week was a focus on weather, astrology and a small section on the different biomes of South Africa. The way South Africa is situated leads to a very diverse environment and wildlife species. It's bordered by the warmer Indian ocean and the colder Atlantic, with currents running along both sides this heavily influences the weather in different areas and in turn that influences the different biomes. North America has about 6 biomes while the country of SA itself has 9, including one of the floral kingdoms that is found no where else on earth.

There was a nice bit on weather but the main focus was on astronomy, and now all those years of playing Age of mythology on the computer have became useful as I know most of the major Greek, Egyptian and Norse myths and stories that the constellations are named after. Tomorrow night I'm grabbing the telescope and taking it out for a few hours of star gazing, in southern Africa there are several key celestial bodies that can only been seen here including the Magellanic clouds where are two of the three dwarf galaxys that can seen with the naked eye. The southern hemisphere has less air and light pollution then the northern parts so out here in the bush you can easily see the 2000+ stars in the heavens, and that's without using binoculars or a telescope.

We did a few game drives and spotted this guy on our way back to camp, he's a big male weighing probably about 90 kg. Unfortunately I had switch my settings and forgot to switch them back so the quality is not what I wish it was but still my first leopard and the last of the big 5 that I needed. He played cat and mouse with us for about 20 minutes, moving back and forward in the bushes before finally stopping long enough for photos.

We where also fortunate enough to go out on a drizzly day and see thousands of termite elities flying around, termites are sensitive to the sun so these young queens and kings only come out when the conditions are right. Many many things feed on them and they are a big source of protein and fat for many animals. Apparently they are tasty when friend up so I'll have to bring a bucket next time.

Here is one of the jumping spiders that grabbed one, these guys do not build webs typically and normally sit on leaves or grass and ambush their pray, they have those big eyes and great eye sight for leaping around.

Here we have a European Roller, they migrate down here from somewhere in Spain between the summers, so they will be heading out in a few weeks. They are called Rollers because of a dive bomb they do when looking for a female. Basically flying up and barrel rolling down to try and impress her, either that or they don't pull up in time and hit the ground or a tree (which has been recorded). I haven't seen that yet but it's one of the bird behaviors I would like to view.

This next week is fully dedicated to birding, never had much of a interest so we'll see how it ends up but to get the qualification you need to be able to ID 120 birds by sight and of those by 100 by sound as well. I know maybe a dozen already and a full week might have good results.