Spring in Rosetta and Notties

A new Conservancy is being fledged in the area of KZN bounded by the Mooi River system on the north western side, the N3 in the north east, the road between Nottingham Road and the N3, and the Nottingham Road/Loteni Road. It is an area rich in grasslands, wetlands and water courses – the natural home of the serval – logo of the Rosetta Nottingham Road Conservancy.

Recently much interesting wildlife has been observed in the area, including Woolly-necked Storks who pop into Greenfields Butchery in the middle of Notties for snacks!

Chris had a Grey Duiker visit  her garden and has seen many sacred ibis on the wall of the dam in the background.

Besides an array of splendid spring flowers, Sarah reported seeing helmeted guineafowl, longtailed widow birds, yellow-billed kites, the freshly-shed skin of a puffadder and stunning Scadoxus.

On the edge of the R103 between Nottingham Road and Rosetta is a small rock outcrop where Penny spotted dassies (rock hyrax) last year. Recently she has glimpsed one and wonders if anyone else seen them? Will they be affected by all the construction in the area with the building of the pipeline? Should we consider asking EKZN Wildlife to move them to a safer spot? Are there other colonies in our conservancy?

Cyrtanthus (below)  and Hypoxis (above) are in flower on the road verges.

Adrian reports: We have a bushbuck doe who is a fairly frequent visitor to the garden (although now that the rain has arrived and leaves are growing everywhere she has less need to come). A really close look through binoculars showed a very large number of engorged blue ticks on her neck where she cannot easily scratch them off. This made us think about the losses of ox peckers through agricultural dipping practices and how our wildlife has to suffer the consequences of blood-sucking parasites. Wonder if there has been any research into this and whether antelope and other animals now have a greater prevalence of tick-borne diseases? Or does their natural immunity still protect them?

The same doe is usually accompanied by a lamb, no longer suckling but browsing like its mother. Intriguingly, there are sometimes two lambs of very similar size. We wonder whether this is in fact also her offspring and did she have twins? But then, when the second lamb is not visible, is it just down in the bush out of sight or where is it? Bushbuck have quite a short gestation period (only about eight months), so it is possible for them to have two lambs in a calendar year. There is no great size difference between these two.  We caught a male Bushbuck on camera too.

Our camera trap has also captured a Black backed Jackal,

A Long Crested Eagle

A little porcupine

Reedbuck doe

and Reedbuck ram

A Grey Duiker

and a Serval.

A public Launch Meeting for the Conservancy is to be held at 1700 on Friday 14^th November 2014 at Rawdons Hotel. This will provide an opportunity for residents of the area to hear about the activities and aims of the Conservancy, to offer their names for membership and to stand as ‘champions’ for their selected conservation activity.