"A tale of a tail"

 Long time, no post. Alas work has been keeping me very busy and truth be told there has been little exciting wildlife in my life to tell you about. I just got my visa back for a trip that may remedy this and I still have lots of exciting photos to share from last year so look for regular posting to resume soon.

What lured me here today though was the fact that two of my favourite bloggers have exquisite snake posts up right now. Darren Naish has an epic post on colubrids up at TetZoo v3.0 and FC has a cracking EDB (that's what snake people call Eastern Diamond Back Rattlesnakes - makes you sound like you're in the know and too busy to spell out the full name ;) ) post up at Pure Florida.

These posts reminded me of a snake tale I'v been meaning to tell. We were driving through Kruger NP in South Africa and were on the look out for leopards. We came to cross a small bridge over a little creek and everyone kept their eyes to the sides looking for beasties lurking in the denser bushes lining the little creek when our guide yelled "COBRAAA!!!!!!!!" There, in the middle of the road bridge was a huge Snouted Cobra built like a brick outhouse. It wasn't particularly long but notably thick and muscular and dark. This was going to be epic. The snake had nowhere to go, it was in the middle of the road with a drop either side due to the bridge and I was pretty sure it was going to rear up as a result providing us with a pretty spectacular sghting and awesome photos. At which point with us still cruising to a halt it managed to find a big hole in the tarmac and promptly escape leaving me with this shot which, I can honestly assure you, shows you the tip of the tail of Naja annulifera.



We waited staring at that hole for 10 minutes but did it come back out? No.  Was it still in the hole when we drove past and leaned out to look down it? No. It did what big dangerous snakes usually do when faced with people, it promptly escaped.

Luckily I do have a picture of the business end of one of these in the image bank because there's a rather lovely pair at London Zoo so here's what you missed.

As you can see this was a serious beastie, even if it did run away.

An inkling of spring.....

We haven't had a hard winter here, just the one frost so far, but I'll still be glad when the days begin to lengthen out a bit more and I get to see a bit more sun. Today I noticed one of my Zantedeschias had decided the same thing. Online sources suggest this should flower from May to June, this chap may be a little premature.....

The giant white arum, Zantedeschia aethiopica, is native to southern Africa in Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland. I've always thought they looked beautiful but a watergardening aunt of mine called them "death lilies" and insisted she would never grow such a bad omen. My own parents weren't keen either but this was one of the first plants I put in my own first garden.

Pups on the rampage....

Not a reference to Michael Clarke's recent (and epic) triple hundred (sorry non-cricket fans) but to some actual puppies. This is one of the few times E,W&W will feature something called a dog because your host is a cat person. These aren't Canis familiaris though. These are African Wild Dogs, the second most endangered canrivore in Africa. I'll give some background to this post later on when work settles down. For now though enjoy the national geographic quality footage below of one of Africa's most special sights.

Top 10 Nature Moments of 2011

It's about that time of the year where I look back on the moments of the previous year that really stood out for me as the best. Last year was unusual in that I saw so many spectacular things the list is all about them and less about the little interesting moments that usually make it on there as I geek out.

1. Platypus - The duck-billled egg-laying freak of Australia; I worked hard to see it and I got spectacular views as a result.
2. Honey Badger - the Honey Badger takes what he wants and doesn't hang around for photos. Nonetheless adding this fantastic creature to my self-found list with a roadside spot was epic. I've never seen an animal run with a shambling, ambling strut before but this guy had charisma.
3. Longimanus - my 30th shark species in the wild was a true monster of the deep.
4. Snouted Cobra - in a year in which I saw a number of the world's most deadly snakes, dead on roads (mozambique spitter, eastern brown(!)), seeing a big egyptian snouted cobra negotiate a road successfully was awesome.

5. Southern Cassowary - enormous dinosaur bird walks out of the forest next to you? Legendary.
6. Lions of the Kruger - my first lion sighting was cool. Cooler still would follow (and will eventually appear on the blog).

 

7. Colugo - a wild flying lemur makes its home in a zoo and I get a reward for looking hard.
8. Black Rhino mother and calf - there's a story coming about this one.
9. Wild cycads of Queensland - geekfest. total geekfest. It was awesome.
10. Saltie - in a year in which I saw both the two big Crocodylus; Estuarine and Nile, there was no competition as to my favourite: 14 feet of Crikey.

The top 10 left no space for other weird marsupials, small antelopes, birds big or small, the 5th biggest snake in the world or hammerhead sharks. Let's hope 2012 is spectacular enough to make next year's top 10 as difficult and as always I'd love to hear about your top 10s (or top 1s!).

Tis the season for a tipple................

.....and at E,W&W command central that currently means this stuff.......

Well actually it will mean this stuff in about a year as I've just decanted it and want to let it develop. This is my home made sloe gin or as I've named it "Red Kryptonite" (because I'm a huge geek) and it's another of those things I thought I'd told you about but apparently didn't. Non-european readers: Sloes are a hedgerow fruit from the Prunus genus (ie same as plums, cherries, peaches and so on) that are small and bitter raw but which when pricked and combined with gin and sugar in the right quantities create a rather delectable liqueur type thing over the course of a few months). If you don't have sloes (or the similar damsons or bullaces around then there is probably a local equivalent you could switch too). I've got a couple of bottles of this stuff and a couple of bottles of sloe whisky set aside for next year's festivities (and a little friendly competition). I've also just filtered a couple of bottles of blackberry vinegar so a) the house smells amazing, b) the hedgerow was kind to me this year; and c) I'm feeling like quite the domestic guru. Time for a latte break.