Category: learning curve

Adrenaline 

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See if you can work out exactly where on my beagle walk this morning I managed to actually tread directly on a Puff Adder (Bitis arietans)…

Yeah, I know that the snake in question had no intention of following me, but you don’t think about that when you’ve just stepped on “the most dangerous snake in Africa*”.

I was happily walking along the beach in Suiderstrand, on the little slope that comes down from the rocky outcrop on the way back from Piet se Punt. You know the one. It – the snake – was more than half hidden in a bush at the right hand side of the path, and I was looking at some fighting Bulbuls over my left shoulder. Next thing, as I stop looking at the ruckus behind me, and turn to face forwards once again – the traditional direction for walking, generally – I look down to see the side my right foot slide off the side of a phat puffy. Think of half stepping on a firm, heavy pool noodle.
And then I legged it.

Your questions answered:

Are you sure it was a Puff Adder?
Yes, 100%. We see a lot of them in Agulhas – 4 this weekend alone, and we were only there for 24 hours. Stunning animals.
Also: I actually trod on it, so I got a good, close-up, extremely brief look at it.

Why didn’t it strike?
I have absolutely no idea. I think I was very lucky.
I was. I was very lucky.

Why did you run?
Pure adrenaline. I did 50+ metres at Usain Bolt pace. On sand.
I know that the puffies don’t chase you, but my brain wouldn’t let me remember that until I was (with hindsight) a frankly ridiculously safe distance away.

What was the state of your underwear after the incident?
No comment.

So. A somewhat fortuitous escape. But wildlife, ne? It’s wild.

UPDATE: 
Additional FAQ:

What was the beagle’s reaction to all this?
The beagle was about 20 metres ahead of me at the time, so had walked right past the snake without noticing. The beagle was wholly uninterested in my blind panic and swearing as there was stuff to sniff and explore.

Why did the snake not move as you approached?
Two reasons, I think. One, it was a puff adder and they really can’t be arsed. And two, looking back now, I was coming from downwind of the snake, walking into a strong south-easter.

 

* Snake people can discuss amongst themselves

Dead penguins

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I have not one, not even two, but THREE dead penguin stories for you today.
Now there’s something that other blogs never give you. (I would imagine, anyway.)

First off: Penguins killed by Penguin Malaria.

Yes, sad news, but avian malaria – causal agent Plasmodium relictum, and spread  by mosquitoes like other malarias – is actually fairly common around the world, even in the UK. Ironically, the only place that birds are safe from avian malaria is Antarctica, famous as being the big cold bit down at the bottom of the world, and frequented by… er… penguins. At the last count, Longleat had lost 25 of its 34 Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti). Let’s hope their efforts to save the remaining 9 are successful.

Secondly: Penguins killed by Caracal (Caracal caracal).

Yes, sad news, but… hang on… haven’t we done this one before?

Well, yes, we have. Here:

A spate of penguin fatalities has occurred in Simon’s Town over the past two weeks. The City has identified the predator by installing trap cameras in the area. The images confirmed the presence of a large caracal.

But that was in July, and that caracal was captured and relocated (we told you about that bit, too).

But Disa (for it was she what was eating all of the penguins) was radio-collared before her relocation, and this time around, it’s not her. Because when one caracal is moved, another will happily take its territory. Especially when that territory features large numbers of lovely plump penguins.

The City of Cape Town urges residents and tourists to support and assist efforts to capture a caracal which is currently preying on endangered African penguins in the Links Crescent and Froggy Pond areas of Simon’s Town.

Disa was quickly captured and successfully relocated, but as we now see, that did little to help the penguins. Assuming that the authorities can work their magic with this new caracal equally quickly – and that things follow the same pattern – I’m hopeful that we can report on more penguin predation before Christmas.

And then there was: Penguin killed by Beagle.

Yes, sad news, but etc etc. This photo was sent from home this morning:

dead-penguin

Happy Feet, it ain’t.

The beagle was found upstairs (the beagle is not allowed upstairs), chewing this penguin chick from our daughter’s bed (the beagle is not allowed to chew the kids’ toys). Essentially, that white cloudy stuff you can see there is spilled penguin brains, and I now have the difficult task of performing some sort of surgery on this juvenile Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) before my juvenile daughter (Homo sapiens) sees it.

Any retribution on the beagle – while satisfying – would sadly be logically pointless as dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are pretty stupid and can’t associate punishment with the actual crime unless they are actually caught in the act.

Either that or they’ve just made us humans think that’s how things work, in which case, they’re actually pretty clever. And devious. And destructive. And oh, why, oh why did we have to get a beagle?

Brittany Lighthouses

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Tagged by London blogger and member of the MEC (Mutual Enjoyment Club), Brian Micklethwait in a lighthouse post? I had better document that.

Brian shares a photo of a poster in a shop window; a poster featuring 12 Brittany Lighthouses, which I love, and which I have half-inched to share here:

brittanylighthouses

Two things I noted about the poster (which I now want for my study wall). Firstly, the second lighthouse from the left is La Jument, a 48m high stone tower built in 1911, and apparently “The most famous lighthouse in the world”. Why the fame? Because of this famous (see?) photo by famous lighthouse photographer, Jean Guichard, which has sold over a million copies.

strength-guichard

But you must ignore that motivational crap about looking fear in the face, because when the photograph was taken, the lighthouse keeper Théodore Malgorn (for it are he in the doorway) had no idea that the wave was coming, as this account testifies:

Malgorn, suddenly realising that a giant wave was about to engulf the structure, rushed back inside just in time to save his life. In an interview he said “If I had been a little further away from the door, I would not have made it back into the tower. And I would be dead today. You cannot play with the sea.”

The photograph – taken on the 21st December 1989 – won second place in the 1991 World Press Photo awards. (The winner was Guichard’s compatriot Georges Mérillon.)

Aaannd the other thing that interested me particularly about the post was the “coffee cup rings” over each of the towers. I don’t think that they are actual coffee cup rings – I’m hoping that they are examples of light characteristics – a representation of the sequence of flashes that differentiate and identify each lighthouse.

My theory is supported by the fact that La Jument (remember that? It’s famous, after all) has a light characteristic of Fl 3 R 15s that’s 3 flashes of a red light every 15 seconds. And look at its coffee cup ring:

brittanylighthouses

Assuming that ring makes up a minute (and ignoring that awkward gap, top right) I can see three flashes 4 times there.

It’s this sort of technical detail which I love about posters like this. It makes it less of a picture and more of a document. And just as I know that my readers needed to know who won the 1991 World Press Photo awards, I know that you’ll want to know the full light characteristic for Cape Agulhas lighthouse. And that is: Fl W 5s 31m 30M – a white light flashing every 5 seconds, 31 metres above sea level and visible for 30 nautical miles. .

Other selected lighthouse light characteristics include (but are not limited to):

Slangkop: Fl 4 W 30s. 4 white flashes every 30 seconds.
Cape Point: Fl 3 W 30s. 3 white flashes every 30 seconds.
Green Point: Fl W 10s. White light flashing every 10 seconds.
Dreswick Point (IOM): Fl 2 W 30s. 2 white flashes every 30 seconds.

Lighthouses, eh? I’m a sucker for them.

Tungsten Station

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I grabbed my trusty camera at the last minute and shot the space station as it passed over Cape Town yesterday evening.

29657434532_1213d41c21_k

Quickly adjusting the exposure time and f-stop on the manual exposure setting allowed me to capture this quick and dirty shot of it going over, but it was only upon reviewing the images later that I realised that a little tweaking of the white balance (which had been set to “Tungsten” for this image) may have been advisable.

I’m such a pro.

It wasn’t a Blue Sunday really. And – aside from the sky – today isn’t really a Blue Monday either.

From Space

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Here’s an image of South Africa from space, via NASA’s Modis/Terra satellite. Modis is Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (I know – it doesn’t quite work, does it?)

With its sweeping 2,330-km-wide viewing swath, MODIS sees every point on our world every 1-2 days in 36 discrete spectral bands. Consequently, MODIS tracks a wider array of the earth’s vital signs than any other Terra sensor. For instance, the sensor measures the percent of the planet’s surface that is covered by clouds almost every day.

That’s conveniently just about the width of South Africa, allowing this sort of shot:

rsz_dsc_0954

Click through for hugeness and detail.

You can see that we were having a wonderful day in Cape Town (although I spent it in a lab, in a car and at Tygerberg Hospital, rather than chilling at a bar by the beach).

I’m hoping to be able to get a repeat image to compare when the cold front comes through on Thursday evening (it’ll be dark, I know) and through Friday morning.