NEWS from the Hide is that the large tassel berry, or Antidesma venosum (actually my favourite name is the voëlsitboom, so very descriptive), that grows around the Hide and specifically my study, is currently in full fruit.
This means that the small berries are hanging in profusion in long tassels from the branches and when I say profusion, I mean that the tassels are the most dominant feature of the tree, almost outnumbering the leaves.
Now, ripe berries mean berry eaters and this means that our tassel berry, and therefore the Hide, is constantly abuzz with birds and monkeys.
All the birds, well, the fruit eaters anyway, appear to love the berries, but in particular we’ve noted the green pigeons, weavers, bulbuls, barbets and the louries (aka the turacos).
The louries are particularly rewarding as they come swooping in across the forest to land in the tree, and then march up and down the branches feeding on the berries.
One day when we had a short, sharp rain shower, we watched a purple-crested lourie luxuriating in the rain. It was spreading and stretching its wings and fanning its tail, not missing a drop.
It did this until the rain stopped and then shook itself well, having had a thoroughly good bath, thank you.
And then the monkeys. There are times when we reckon that every monkey on the lower South Coast is in our tassel berry, it’s like a national convention of monkeys out there.
The funny thing is that they don’t seem to be too fussy about the state of the berries, they gobble them up from unripe green-white to fully ripe shiny black.
They pick them off the tassels individually, or pull off a whole tassel and eat the berries off it as if they were eating a mealie – tassel berry on the cob, as it were.
There is fierce competition over the tree as well. Just 10 minutes ago, as I write, we were sitting in the Hide watching a tree full of monkeys of all sizes, gobbling away.
Suddenly there was a loud and menacing bark, obviously from a large male, and the tree emptied in a split second. Then the barker arrived, all on his own to claim the tree, but we’ll never know what that was all about. Anyway, it’s all part of the entertainment, and education, offered by the Hide.
Right, across the world to Mexico to lecture the birds on the dangers of smoking.
I think we all know about smoking, but now it seems that it’s bad for birds too.
Research done in Mexico indicates that birds which use cigarette ends to line their nests (the cellulose in the filters wards off parasites, much the way certain natural materials do) are suffering long-term ill effects from the toxins that are also present in the filters.*
The scientists are not offering any solutions, except perhaps the obvious – more humans should give up smoking and stop dropping their stompies. Cheers to that!
*The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media.
