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The last time I watched African Giant Hornbills in action was in Ethiopia in 2019, where we watched one wrestling with a chameleon.

https://eyesonthewild.blog/2019/10/19/harbingers-of-death/

This time, they were eating much much tinier prey, small origami cocoons containing the grubs of some insect. To swallow these, they tossed them the air, just like toucans do. Those big bills don’t always make life easy.

Here is the tasty morsel:

We were watching a nesting pair. This is the male. The folds of bare skin under his beak are usually folded up:

He flew to join his mate, his previously concealed white wing feathers signaling his imminent arrival:

And as they greeted each other lovingly, in front of a Hallmark-worthy wildflower backdrop, those throaty skin folds swelled to form a perfect Valentine:

PS Here is one of those wildflowers, known as a Pretty Lady, or much less romantically a Hairy Spindlepod, Cleome hirta.

I am always delighted to discover an animal that I have not only never seen before, but never even heard of, and indeed can barely pronounce. Such a one was the Common Tsessebe, Damaliscus lunatus lunatus. These Eureka moments remind you that no matter how old you get, there is still a vast undiscovered world out there to learn about.

First, there was a single male, amongst a group of impala.

Then, there was a group of females, with a wildebeest.

And they had little ones

with tiny horns

The tsessebe is a large strong antelope, the fastest on the planet. It can top 90kmh. I thought to myself “It looks rather like a topi”, and indeed they are closely related, but the horns are differently shaped.

We read a great deal about the huge declines in insect populations worldwide, so I am always thrilled to discover a new bug. Most of these I have never seen before: always something new under the sun.

Look at this enormous Stonefly, about 1 1/2 inches long; my finger is there for scale. Its belly was bright orange.

I tried to get an accurate ID, and found, rather excitingly, a photograph of what looks like the same species, labelled by Bugguide as “unknown to science”. I’ve uploaded my photo and am waiting with bated breath for some entomologist to name it after me.

In contrast, here is one of the world’s tiniest grasshoppers, at about 1/4″ long. It rejoices in the modest name of Obscure Pygmy Grasshopper, Tetrix arenosa, in contrast to all those more bombastic Famous Giant Grasshoppers out there. It took some work to ID it, ably assisted by Brandon Woo of Texas A&M.

When I was a child, I had an irrational fear of Daddy Longlegs, not strictly insects since they’re eight-legged arachnids, like spiders. Having long since put aside childish things, I now find them fascinating. More properly called harvestmen, in close up they are intricately put together.

This one is, I think, Leiobunum ventricosum. Unlike spiders, they do not produce silk, have a single pair of eyes, and the thorax and abdomen are almost fused into a single body part. The second pair of legs are extra long and double as antennae; you can see it reaching out with one, exploring its world.

I’ll end with two species of damselfly, both bluets, on the edge of my beaver pond. Although these are not new to me, they are beautiful, and remind me that summer is upon us. These four Azure Bluets, Enallagma aspersum, have all recently emerged, and their wings are spread while they harden .

Right next to them was a pair of amorous Vernal Bluets, Enallagma vernale, the male distinguished from the Azure Bluets by having most of its abdomen blue rather than black. The rather drab female attempting to get into the appropriate position has a greenish head and beige body.

I should note that the male is not trying to strangle his bride. During mating he holds her still while she raises her abdomen to receive his sperm.

Two solitary elderly male elephants approached each other from opposite directions.

This short video shows what happened; it is briefly silent at the start, but make sure your sound is on high:

The trunk greeting, in which they smell each others’ mouths, is common. Our guide said they were likely to be old friends reuniting, and would now hang out together for a while. Although he suggested that the rumbling sounds you hear are deliberate tummy rumbles/burps, the scientific literature disagrees, and says they are laryngeal in origin (yellow below), mediated via very large resonating cavities including the trunk, in light blue below (from Beeck et al 2022).

Stoeger et al 2012 show that in bonding situations, when the animals are close to each other like the two we watched, the rumbles are emitted orally, not nasally.

As for me, I’m off to lunch with old friends from high school. In this bonding context, any nasal snorting sounds will be caused by laughter.

Time to update you on Lovell. The migrating waterbirds have moved on to Canada, but others breed here:

A solitary Double-crested Cormorant has been hanging around

and most surprisingly a loon, usually only found on much much bigger water bodies, here amongst the spatterdock and dragonflies:

Off the water, the songbirds are here. Merlin and I heard 19 species in 20 minutes in my backyard on May 25. Migrants like the indigo bunting and the scarlet tanager breed here too:

and something has built a clever nest in a cleft in this huge rock:

Reptiles and amphibians are out and about:

Butterflies and moths are emerging:

That is not pollen, but its own hairy orange legs.

As are mayflies and tiger beetles:

Wildflowers appear deep in the woods, before the tree foliage blocks out the sun. Here is a Rose Twisted Stalk, with the tiny midges that pollinate it hovering nearby:

And finally, mammals. Deer, bear, and moose are around, though none have posed for me. But this beaver did:

May in Maine.

Black-backed Jackals have a varied diet. They’re not just scavengers, especially in an area like the Makgadikgadi where alpha predators are few and far between. This jackal was digging and pouncing on something very tiny in the long grass, early in the morning with its coat tipped with dew:

I made a video of it in action, but it’s almost impossible to see any details, so I captured a couple of stills from the video. At the very start, it catches what I suspect was a beetle, carries it off (here) and then lies down to eat it.

At the end, it catches what looks like something small, dark and furry:

Here’s the video (with long slow sections excised!):

Tiny morsels, but hopefully enough to keep body and soul together.

Like the Red Lechwe, Kobus leche, the Waterbuck, Kobus ellipsiprymnus, depend on water. They’re related, although they don’t look much like each other. Here is a female:

I love the fluffiness of their coat:

The males are rather fine:

Both males and females have very photogenic bottoms, ringed in white:

Their sweat glands secrete water-repellent oils, giving them a distinctive odor. Apparently the meat of older animals can develop a nasty flavor, but it is not true that lions won’t hunt and eat waterbuck, though they may not be their first choice.

When I was checking details for this posting I learnt something fascinating: once in a blue moon, Waterbucks and Red Lechwe mate and produce a hybrid. Watch this PBS video (I specially liked the very final shot):

The Rarest Antelope in the World

Red Lechwe antelope, Kobus leche, were grazing amongst the water meadows by the Khwai River. One male:

and a group of females:

They’re specialized for marshy wetlands, and their lower legs have water-repellent oils that help them run fast in knee-deep water. As a result, that is their refuge if predators threaten.

Only the males have horns:

As we watched, a goliath heron flew in:

and landed just behind the lechwe.

The lechwe stand about three feet at the shoulder, and the goliath heron (the world’s largest heron) is up to five feet, so they can look each other in the eye.

He was displaying, though we couldn’t see a nearby female:

Off he strutted; hope springs eternal.

PS Red Lechwe are now categorized as Near Threatened by the IUCN. They are found in discontinuous marshy areas in Northern Botswana and its neighboring countries.

[Back to Botswana!]

Vervet monkeys, Cercopithecus aethiops, pop up from time to time in my blogs. They’re widely distributed in Africa, and often hang out near lodges where they raid the tables and kitchens. These were nowhere near any lodges, I’m happy to say.

The mature males have famously blue scrotums, and this guy (and his family) were close enough that you can see them rather clearly in the closeups below!

He was hanging out and grooming, while acting as a lookout for the females foraging in the long grass below.

Sleepily, he allowed us a good look at his rather intimidating dentition.

They mostly eat flowers, leaves, and fruit, but as you can probably guess, his diet includes meat. They have been seen killing and eating tree squirrels, and francolins.

There were some youngsters behind him,

and one was getting brave:

They have exquisite fur, and a fearless gaze:

and a very long tail:

Walking along the brook (in shadow on the right in the photo below), I saw something tiny and bright red by some twigs:

Upon inspection, I realized that I was looking at the remains of an otter repast. The ground was littered with fish scales, and the tiny red thing was a small bone or cartilage, probably from the gills, with remnants of bright red flesh still attached:

Most interesting of all, there were small clusters of bright yellow eggs left behind:

I asked fishing friends if they could ID the fish, and eventually with the help of a State of Maine biologist they converged on a fallfish as the most likely victim . They do spawn at this time of year, and one friend had recently caught one a mile or so downstream from my brook. This last photo was taken a couple of winters ago, and the fish in question (half a mile upstream from the dining debris) is definitely a fallfish (a type of chub native to New England).

My other favorite aquatic mammal has created a new perfectly symmetrical sculpture:

In the woods, the red maples have been flowering. Some trees bear only male flowers,

and others only female ones.

The pollen is spread by the winds to the female flowers, which eventually produce the seeds as winged samaras. The male flowers fall gently off into the streams, where the waters had gathered them into a heart:

I found a strange plant called Snakeskin Liverwort, or Snakewort, Conocephalum salebrosum:

It is a non-vascular plant, a primitive small creeping thing whose name is very descriptive. Each leaf (or thallus) is covered in polygonal bubbles which are air pores:

It has a distinctive smell, and is also called Great Scented Liverwort or Cat’s Tongue liverwort. It needs moist places (this was right next to the stream), partly because of the lack of veins to transport water, but also because for reproduction the sperm must swim through water from one plant to find another plant with eggs.

And the very earliest blooms, as always are the trailing arbutus: