As I do, wherever I am, I seem to muse about blog posts … yesterday I was happily sitting outside having lunch up at a local hotel – with a croquet lawn to admire, the English Channel waves undulating a few hundred feet away …
...an idyllic sunny day to spend a bit of time with a friend … soon after we first met we were having lunch … as we were enjoying ourselves … a mighty seagull powered its way from the roof and whipped my friend's piece of salmon off her plate! Yikes and yugh!
Seagulls scavenging ... I must say that looks
quite a good tasty pasty - better than some
We haven't been eating outside since … but the manager informed us - they had seagull scarers now – so we risked it …
… oh yes – we were safe! But no … a very pretty emerald golden spider was flitting around me … matching the thistles on my skirt … I managed to release him to the care of the earth …
… looks like he might have been a Cucumber Spider – they seem quite common, but I've never noticed one before, though they appear at this time of year …He's quite pretty isn't he?
… but as I go to various group classes – history, memoir, life-science and music appreciation (today's class) and others … I ended up pondering humans … and how odd we all are … how our behaviours are all so varied … all good fillers for a blog post!
But I digress – I think! - and then remembered the Desert Rain Frog and my time in Namibia … that I'd intended to write about …
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Desert Rain Frog |
… he's a plump species with bulging eyes, short snout, short limbs, spade-like feet, and webbed toes … charming little fella, n'est pas?
Added to which he has an unusually high-pitched cry similar to that of a squeaky toy.
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Another view of a Desert Rain Frog |
Also he's unique as he develops directly from the egg into an adult – so no tadpole stage. He pads happily about on the sand, not requiring water in his habitat for survival.
Their habitat is a very small strip of land in the Cape Province of South Africa, and the coastal strand in southern Namibia … where the Skeleton Coast Desert can be found – an area stretching from Angola in the north, into the Cape Province further south …
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The marked edge of southern Africa - where this little frog si found |
The Desert is magical … fog provides most moisture in an otherwise arid and dry region and it's amazing how much can survive in the coastal dunes – about 24 miles wide, and 310 miles in length …
… our little Desert Rain Frog is one of those incredible species … sadly its habitat is being lost to human 'needs' (mining and tourism) …
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Namibian homelands 1978 - the Skeleton Coast is marked, as too the Desert |
I'd like to think that we will realise what we have on this earth … and which we should be looking after for future generations …
My mother and I went there about 35 years ago … strange but true!
Thanks for visiting – another Bran Tub post … so many other subjects to get to: I'll get there …
Hilary Melton-Butcher
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