Tumaren

Category: Insects | Date: May 15 2008 | By: tumaren

I ran into this Golden Orb spider in the door of our camel boma last week.  Fortunately i ran into a small strand first and was able to stop before putting my face  right through her beautiful web. Golden Orb spiders in New Guinea have such strong webs that they are woven and used locals for catching fish.

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Category: Birds | Date: May 08 2008 | By: tumaren

Goatsucker is a traditional name given to birds in the order Caprimulgiformes - the nightjars. The term was based on a belief that the birds drank the milk of goats. Fortunately for the local masai this belief was long ago proven erroneous. Nightjars are insectivores predominantly nocturnal and closely related to owls.
The other day i ran into the following Slender-tailed Nightjar while walking. It had two young with it which remained so difficult to see it took several minutes to see them after the mother flushed.

here is the adult:

and here is the hidden chick:

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Category: Reptiles | Date: May 04 2008 | By: tumaren

Sorry, I couldn’t resist such a tempting headline. It does not look like much but what you have below is a tortoise orgy. Two males (smaller and darker) following and attempting to mate with the much larger female.

Many male turtles and tortoises can be identified by the concavity of their plastron (the underside). You can see a bit of this concavity in this image of one of the males:

And aging tortoises and turtles can also be done by an examination of the plastron. Just like in trees years are denoted in lines which can be counted out from the corner of each scute (square segments that make up the plastron). My counting on the below image is a rough estimate. Some years when a tortoise did not grow much are hard to count so give or take some years this little male chasing the big female is just a bit younger than me (i was born in 1970). The female’s plastron was so worn that i couldn’t read it. I think we can just say that she is definitely not a flower child,, maybe more like a baby boomer.

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Category: Mammals | Date: May 02 2008 | By: tumaren

Just back from a walk along our boundary with the neighboring ranch Male. Along the boundary i ran into this female Lesser Kudu. She was with a herd of 6 other females/young and one beautiful dark male that only showed himself once. When we first told people about our lesser kudu here many did not believe they were lesser, insisting that we were seeing Greater Kudu that are also around in the more hilly areas.

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