Kleinzee's insects

Last week saw us on a new site up at Kleinzee which is a small ex-mining town previously owned by De Beers.  They have closed the mine, after stripping the whole coast line, and all the employees moved on. Very few people live in the town now which means it's practically a ghost town.  Quite eery actually.  

The wine farm sites was almost devoid of birds with only crows and kestrels to be found.  While doing vantage points with no birds, I spent some time looking closer to the ground for other interesting things.  The flowers of course we quite special as this is known as the Succulent Karoo.  More on them in the next post.

Drone fly - bee imitator

This strange looking fly imitates a bee.  It looked like a bee, sounded exactly like a bee but certainly behaved differently.  They were all over my jeans legs and I was quite worried as I am allergic to bees.  But, no problem, as they are not bees at all.  Very odd looking though.

Dung Beetle

I love dung beetles. They are so strong (and I do like "strong men").  Imagine this little creature that weighs nothing, can roll a huge ball of dung for as far as he needs it to go with almost no effort at all, and he does it all backwards with his nose to the ground.  I am used to seeing them in the Kruger Park and didn't expect to see it here.

 House Fly

South Africa is full of flies.  We have a climate that they love and they are a big part of our lives, we just have to deal with it.  Most of the time they don't bother me, but they do like to come out as soon as we light a braai and bring out the meat in summer.  On this site, for some reason, there were quite a few flying objects that were bothering me. This fly was one of them.  I haven't been able to find out what species it is yet but it is the common house fly.

Locust

 Blue Monkey Beetle (Scelophysa trimeni)

This is my favourite photo of the trip.  I love this blue monkey beetle, so pretty and it looks so nice on this yellow flower.  These beetle is only found in South Africa and is part of the Scarab family (of Egyptian tomb fame).  They are endemic to the Namaqualand of SA.  I found them in the sticky flower of the sour fig too, along with brown female beetles that look very similar as well as another unknown beetle.

Stick Mantis

It's great to find a new creature you haven't seen before, probably one of the things that keeps me hooked to nature and all the living things on our planet.  You will never "see it all", there is just too much.  This stick mantis is a new one for me.  I have seen other stick mantises that look nothing like this one and I can't find it on the internet to give you a species name.  It was so fast, I struggled to take a photo of it.  I only noticed it because it ran right past my foot while I was looking at some plants.  If it had sat still, I would never have known it was there.  Such amazing camouflage!

Trying to identify caterpillars is an almost impossible task but this little guy is just so pretty!  Amazing colour in the little nodules and all those spiky hairs.  Really awesome, wish I knew what is was going to turn into.

And talking about fast, this beetle was so quick it was impossible to get a good photo.  Even when I put my foot in his path, he found a way round me in milliseconds.  Possibly another species of dung-beetle?

And to end off, we have our own lovley Shongololo or millipede.  They have the name Shongololo from the word "ukushonga" which means "to roll up". The are of the family Spirostreptrornorpha.

When threatened, they roll up into a spiral to protect their under belly or sternum.