A newcomer to my garden- White-browed Scrub Robin

While relaxing in my lounge with a 1000-piece puzzle a few months ago, I heard a bird-call I’ve never heard before. Grabbing my phone, I slowly stepped outside to see if I could catch a glimpse — no luck. So my next move was to search for the bird-call on the Roberts Birds app on my iPad, and after a short search, I found him — a White-browed Scrub Robin! (Cercotrichas leucophrys).

)Still on my patio, I played the bird-call as loud as my iPad would allow and lo-and-behold, he suddenly appeared on the fence, trying to find the interloper who was, probably, trying to infiltrate his territory!

White-browed Scrub Robin flashing his tail, warning any possible interloper that he’s ready for him.

And true to all Robins, he pranced and posed and flipped his tail in that typical Robin fashion, allowing me to get a few pics. We played this game of him listening intently to my bird-call and excitedly answering in return untill he decided that this threat was obviously not worth his attention.

Since then, every time I play his call, he actually comes and investigates. But for the past two months or so I haven’t heard or seen him at all. Maybe he’s raising a family somewhere. I will keep on being on the lookout for him …

Indigenous to Southern Africa, it is common across the the eastern half of South Africa through to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and northern Namibia.

Gestreepte wipstert [Afrikaans]

***

Spittle Bugs (or Frog Hoppers)

 

Raintree Spittle Bugs (Ptyelus flavescens) on a Coral tree. 

Spittle bugs (or Frog hoppers) on a Coral Tree (Erythrina lysistemon), indigenous to South Africa. 

As I was photograohing them, the sky was blue, and I wondered why it was raining? I actually just happened to pick a spot just beneath a family of raintree spittlebugs! 

These white foam blobs are produced by the immatures, or nymphs, of spittlebugs, small insects related to aphids and other true bugs, in the order Hemiptera. Young nymphs blow bubbles with their excretions, and so they live and feed in a glorious soggy huddle. The dripping foam keeps them moist and cool and keeps predators and parasites away.

Empty skins and some adult Spittle Bugs. 

They suck the sap of a tree through a drinking straw, called a ‘rostrum’ or ‘stylus’. Plant sap is not all that  nutritious, so the bugs have to work through a lot of it to get sufficient proteins. But this Coral Tree doesn’t seem at all the worse for the wear and as I got close to some of the bugs, they would shoot of as if out of a catapult, so I presume they disperse fairly quickly when disturbed so won’t cause too much harm to the host tree.

::