Did you know – colour changing animals - Surprises await in Banhine

As reported in November / December, Banhine National Park is still in the grips of an extensive drought and although isolated showers have occurred sporadically there has been no relief in terms of general rain that could have filled up the pans and more importantly the wetland. Daily we would watch the storms build up all around us and on most afternoons we could watch showers occurring in and around the park, but they were very isolated and short in duration. That does not mean that Banhine does not remain a remarkable place, even in its current dry desiccated condition.

A storm that fell just before Christmas created a few small pans within the wetland. Some of these still held a bit of water in the latter half of January and resembled a mud puddle surrounded by a mud verge. We decided to investigate anyway to see what had been using the pan if anything. As we approached, there were a number of Kittlitz’s plovers running along the edge. I was studying these to see whether there wasn’t anything more interesting amongst them when Darren, my son, exclaimed “pratincoles” to my left. I hadn’t seen any pratincoles, so I was wondering whether Darren had lost it completely and did a quick search – nothing. “Where?” I asked, “All over!” he said.

I then dropped my binos to see where he was looking and there amongst the grass tufts were a bunch of red-winged pratincoles. In all we counted about twenty in the group. In successive days we went back and they were still there, and then one morning a flock of about fifty flew past the camp. That was more pratincoles than I had seen in my life to that point. A few days later the water had dried up, but we went to look again anyway. There were still a few lost pratincoles and the inevitable Kittlitz’s, but great was our surprise when we found a yellow wagtail meandering over the mud. I had previously only seen two of those, so there was great excitement.

Fortunately our avian surprises did not end there. In a drive across the grassland and neighbouring wetland we saw numerous red-necked falcons, a kori bustard, blackbellied korhaan and a painted snipe at another pan in the grassland. We also saw numerous (about 20) pallid harriers flying low across the grassland or perched on isolated trees. Here again was a species that I had seen in drips and drabs and had never seen so many in one place at the same time. If this is what Banhine is like in the drought I am looking forward with great anticipation to what we will find in the wet! If the birdlife had proved to be exciting (we had a tally of 184 species), many of which are previously unrecorded for the area, then the herpetofauna (reptiles) were still going to give us a major adrenalin boost.

I had anticipated that we would find some new and interesting species in Banhine as the reserve and surrounding area has virtually not been explored in terms of the herpetofauna. But we hadn’t seen By Errol Pietersen In Banhine Surprises await in Banhine much indication of any reptiles thus far. One morning I started scratching in the dense leaf litter under a tree and great was my excitement when after the third or fourth scratch I unearthed a golden blind legless skink, but one that I had never seen before. (I had previously located two on the San Sebastao Peninsula about 300 kilometres further east.)

The one I had caught resembled a sub-species located on Santa Carolina Island in the Archipelago, but even then there were differences. The one we had, had almost completely translucent sides and one could see the organs functioning and what the lizard had had for dinner. (Well almost so!) There is a chance that the species we found could be a new subspecies of the golden blind legless skink (Typhlosaurus aurantiacus spp), but all the comparisons and DNA testing will have to be done once we have been able to collect a representative sample. We also found a frog species that I had not seen before and cannot identify from any of the available literature. Here again we are going to have to do the necessary comparisons to see whether we have a new species or not.

The frog is likely to belong to the Tomopterna genus, but does not seem to fit in with any of the species listed for the area or the surrounding territories. An amazing aspect about this frog is that it seems to change colour as a result of stress levels. When we first found the frog it was a light olive green colour with darker green spots. While we were photographing it a blue tinge started to infuse the abdomen from the back legs up until most of the sides and lower abdomen had a distinct blue tinge to it. While scratching in leaf litter looking for more blind legless skinks we unearthed a garter snake (My first in almost fifty years of fooling around with snakes).

This snake too has riddles. Sundevall’s garter snake sub-species longicauda is supposed to occur in that area and the specimen we found looks like longicauda at first glance, but when one starts examining the scales then it keys out to be De Coster’s garter snake that is supposed to occur south of Maputo - an extension of about 400 kilometres to its known range. (Or possibly a different sub-species?) What has become obvious from the very limited looking that we have done to date is that there is the potential for finding a whole lot of different reptiles and amphibians in Banhine. This is going to require an extensive survey where meticulous attention to detail is going to have to be the order of the day as there seems to be a lot of variation from previously described animals.

All in all Banhine remains a very special place with tremendous potential, but at this point in time not for the faint hearted as temperatures and humidity are very high making life very uncomfortable. Just to add to this, drinking water is problematic and one has to ration oneself to water. This can become rather taxing with day temperatures exceeding 40º C on a fairly regular basis at present.