International Citizen Science Day in The Company’s Garden

International Citizen Science Day in The Company’s Garden – by Les Underhill

All but one of the thousands of people in The Company’s Garden, in the heart of Cape Town, were there to enjoy the autumn sun, and hoping for rain. I was there to celebrate International Citizen Science Day, Saturday, 14 April 2018. The sun made it easy to take photos for the Virtual Museum (http://vmus.adu.org.za).

The dragonflies and damselflies, taken together, are called the Odonata. The damselflies mostly fold their wings over their backs, but they are mainly associated with really clean freshwater. So it was a bit of a surprise to find a damselfly sitting on the stalks emerging from the ornamental pond in the top photo.

The pair of Egyptian Geese in this pond had one gosling. Probably this was the only one left of a brood; the average starting off size of a brood is eight. This brood shrinkage is not a conservation issue in The Company’s Gardens. There is no shortage of Egyptian Geese.

This goose parent used the fountain in the ornamental pond as lookout. Cecil John Rhodes, of Cape to Cairo ambitions, has turned his back on this Egyptian Goose. Reminders of the failure to put a railway from here to Egypt is apparently a stressful topic.

The war horses and soldiers of the Delville Wood Memorial have to withstand the unsavoury attentions of the Hartlaub’s Gulls. They provide a great vantage point from which they can swoop down on anyone who scatters any food.

The Company’s Garden has a well-maintained section of vegetables. This is the best spot for butterflies. The most abundant butterfly today was the Cabbage White. This is South Africa’s only invasive alien butterfly. It was first recorded in Sea Point, Cape Town, in 1996, and has already expanded its range as far as the Eastern Cape.

This African Monarch was still flying in spite of large fractions of its wing area having worn away.

Here is a younger and more vibrantly coloured African Monarch.

Outside of suburbia, the Garden Acraea, occurs mainly in forest and woodland. It has moved into the suburbs on a large scale, because its favourite host plant on which its caterpillars feed is the Wild Peach Kiggelaria Africana, and these are grown in many gardens.

Another species that originally was a forest inhabitant is the Hadeda. This noisy bird has made itself at home in the suburbs, and in The Company’s Garden it happily feeds in the beds while people walk by on the adjacent footpaths.

This Grey Squirrel is another introduced alien, which seems to have The Company’s Garden as the epicentre of its Cape Town distribution. Here is one, of hundreds, and it is feeding on an acorn, from an introduced oak tree. So far, there is nothing unusual about all of this.

But the squirrel moves off looking like a rabbit. Somehow, it is coping with life minus its bushy tail.

All these photographs will be uploaded to the Virtual Museum. They will be valuable in two ways. They will confirm the continued existence of each species in this locality. And especially for the butterflies, and for the damselfly, these records will provide information on the time of the year when they are in flight. As we move through April, and the weather in Cape Town gets cooler, we anticipate seeing fewer and fewer of these two groups of insects.