On our second evening we had a visitor that looked like a cat though not a cat at all.
The rusty-spotted or large-spotted genet (Genetta maculata) is a member of the Viverridae family that includes civet cats, none of which are felines.
Genets are excellent climbers so this one must have clambered up the deck poles in the dark to wait at the edge of the dining area for a handout. He has an omnivorous diet that includes rodents, doves, skinks, spiders, eggs, fruits, berries and seeds so our buffet certainly had something to tempt him.
Fortunately for everyone our genet was shy and ran to hide if anyone approached. He always crouched low.
If he’d stood up to his full height we would have realized he was not a cat. (Photo from Wikimedia)
Yesterday I was in an airplane flying home from Southern Africa when a North American marmot (Marmota monax) predicted how long winter will last. The groundhog said we’ll have an early spring.
Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring Friday in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania, the scene of the country’s largest and best known Groundhog Day celebration in the United States.
The annual event is a tongue-in-cheek ritual in which Phil’s handlers, members of a club with roots in the late 19th century, reveal whether the groundhog has seen his shadow.
Just after sunrise Friday, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club announced Phil did not see his shadow, which will usher in early springlike weather. The groundhog seeing his shadow presages six more weeks of winter, according to the group.
Sunshine is so rare during western Pennsylvania winters that we celebrate whenever we see shadows. However there is one day per year — 2 February — when we’re happy to have clouds.
Yesterday at sunrise in Punxsutawney the clouds were thickly overcast at 900 feet so there was no way Phil could see his shadow. An early spring! The crowd went wild.
Now that we’re over that hurdle, I’m looking forward to sunshine for the next five days.
Yesterday we went on a bird drive in Zambezi National Park. Today we drive to Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe for our first game drive. We’ll see many of the animals pictured above and listed below.
Lion
Elephant and zebra
Oryx (did not see this animal)
Greater kudu
Impala
Cape buffalo
During our tour the words Safari or Game Drive mean “Drive around and look for birds and animals.”
To give you an idea of what I’m experiencing I’ve included a promotional video from Road Scholar, created for one of their other African programs.
This is NOT the program that I’m attending. (The video is Program #3645, I’m on Program #21528.) However some of the locations and many of the experiences are the same.
Giraffes are way cool. They’re the tallest mammal on earth, they hardly sleep at all (only 10-120 minutes per day), they need less water than a camel, and they have big hearts … literally. Their population is also declining. In December 2016 they were placed on IUCN’s Red List of Vulnerable species.
Have their numbers improved in the past seven years? How are giraffes doing nowadays?
Today, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation estimates the current Africa-wide giraffe population at approximately 117,000 individuals.
[Since the 1980s] this is a drop by almost 30%, a slightly less bleak picture than previously portrayed in the 2016 IUCN Red List assessment that estimated giraffe at less than 100,000 individuals. However, this updated information is based more on improved data rather than on actual increases in numbers. Unfortunately, in some areas traditionally regarded as prime giraffe habitat, numbers have dropped by 95% in the same period [since the 1980s].
A 2007 analysis suggested six species on the map below. To get the latest four species (2021), lump [blue+green] and [pink+red]. Yellow and orange are distinct species.
@KeepingItWild set up a big mirror in the woods in Australia (i.e. “the bush”) and captured animal reactions. Interestingly many of the animals in this 8-minute video are not native to Australia. For instance: red deer, rabbits and pheasants.
If you’ve been to the American Southwest, Central America or northern Colombia, you may have encountered a white-nosed coati (Nasua narica), the tropical daytime equivalent of the raccoon. Like his cousin he has a long striped tail, can climb trees and is not picky about what he eats.
Interestingly he loves balsa (Ochroma pyramidale) nectar and is important to the tree’s propagation. Coatis insert their long narrow snouts into the flowers, get pollen on their noses and move on to pollinate other flowers. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
Coatis are relatively rare in the American Southwest so it was cool when this one made an appearance at the Visitor Center at Coronado NPS in southeastern Arizona.
These animal cousins might encounter each other within the coati’s more limited range though they operate at different times — the coati during the day, the raccoon at night.
No. In both cases they have smelled something interesting, perhaps a female in heat, and are breathing through their mouths and opening their airways to take in as much scent as possible into a special olfactory organ called the vomeronasal organ.
They are making a flehmen response. On Throwback Thursday, learn more and see a video in this vintage article:
Coyotes (Canis latrans) live in Pittsburgh but you might never notice because most of them keep a low profile. In Pennsylvania coyotes are hunted and trapped all year long — and they know it — so they generally avoid humans and operate at night.
Occasionally coyotes howl in Pittsburgh, usually from the woods, but I have yet to hear it. Since they’re larger than their western cousins you probably won’t see an amazing performance like this one in Tucson.
Just a coyote howling from the rooftop of a car in Tucson, Ariz.
Reindeer, also known as caribou (Rangifer tarandus), have been hunted by humans for thousands of years. An individual reindeer is vulnerable but the herd has a defense mechanism that protects them from humans, polar bears, grizzlies, wolves and other predators. It’s called a reindeer cyclone.
This is a “Reindeer Cyclone”.
A swirling mass of threatened reindeer stampeding in a circle making it impossible to target an individual. The weakest and fawns are in the middle.. pic.twitter.com/mFFvn9YGc4
Watering holes are places of abundant wildlife in Arizona’s Sonoran desert as captured on this trail cam in the borderlands. One of the night visitors is a ringtail (Bassariscus astutus), a member of the raccoon family, shown above. (There are two embedded videos below; please wait for them to refresh.)
Lots of other interesting critters visit this borderlands trail camera: coyote, coati, bear, gray fox, northern goshawk, ringtail, deer, Mexican spotted owl eating a bat, turkey vulture, Gould's turkey, and western spotted skunk, to name a few. https://t.co/KRYPVrxWd7pic.twitter.com/JKZ3FN29N6
When water crosses political boundaries animals cross, too, back and forth from Arizona to Mexico. But now the Border Wall makes most of that impossible.
Listen to Quitobaquito Springs flowing peacefully just feet from the U.S.-Mex border. This true desert oasis has provided life-giving water to endangered wildlife in the UNESCO International Biosphere Reserve spanning Arizona & Sonora, Mex, which is now severed by a border wall. pic.twitter.com/MWBjm0TeER
