Evening walk

What a privilege..   living right next to one of the most important natural areas on the Cape Flats… and getting a chance to explore and discover the inner-most parts of the wetland itself !!

 On Wednesday evening, Rob and I joined a group of Friends of the Kenilworth Racecourse, led by a few Cape Nature Conservationists, to tour the ecologically sensitive and hugely significant wetlands and reserve areas encompassed by the racecourse tracks, buildings and irrigation dams.

 At first, when we saw the two young conservationists were wearing really short shorts and cut-off jeans, we just thought “Silly tree huggers” – but discovered their reasoning later.  They led us along the old road, showing us the endangered plants they had recently established in the area, as well as a toad they had recently heard, but had not yet seen (the Sand Toad was very kind to sit quietly in the tour guide’s hand while everyone flashed away with their cameras).

Soon we were told we’d be leaving the main path, and head off to find some of the rare micro-frogs, and it was mentioned that ‘it might get a little wet’ !  We ended up stomping, ankle deep in water, right into the wetland area!!   (so much for ‘a little wet’!!)

We spotted a cool earthworm that was glowing, as though he had day-glo in him! (I’m told it might be a reaction from when they metabolize the phosphorous they come across).  And the conservationists pointed out the rare Disa species, that they’ve managed to re-introduce into the wild, after it was defined as extinct.

Finally we reached the edge of a sort of pond area, with a floating grass bed in the middle, which is where the frogs like to hang out and breed.  the guides waded in (that explained the shorts), and retrieved lots of different coloured microfrogs for us all to look at in torch-lite. (here’s our attempt at taking a picture of two of them, which were at the bottom of this water bottle)

That done, we all squelched back to dry land, and headed off to look at the man-made dams that were built to supply water for the grass on the track. They contain Carp, which were brought to the dams for fishing.  The walls of the dams are very steep, so the conservationists would add branches and other organic material along it, so that animals and birds could roost there and get in and out of the water.

And that was that.. ! Gorgeous evening.. definitely recommended!!