Colourful Elegant Grasshopper at Coega

So how high does one jump when you're walking around in the grass looking at the horizon and see movement from the corner of your eye to find about 10 of these colourful Elegant Grasshoppers all around your legs.  In my case pretty high as I did taking some photos with my phone in the Coega area.  Sorry I didn't have my camera to get a better picture though.

Web site (not website)

Port Elizabeth has some wonderful nature reserves where a photographer can loose himself in...

Orb Web Spider

Usually I post about places or buildings or monuments.  Today I'm posting a spider.  A golden orb web spider I encountered in a wild fig tree in Uitenhage.

Uitenhage has some seriously big ants

A little caching adventure in Uitenhage brought us to Cannon Hill overlooking the town.  Walking back down the path Drama Princess gave a bit of a scream and jumped onto the grass.  There on the path was a couple of seriously big ants making their way up the hill.  I tried to get a close up but wasn't going to mess with this guys.

Pine Tree Emperor Moth larvae

A Geocaching outing last weekend yielded more than just a cache container.  It also resulted in an inspection and photo session of what turned out to be Pine Tree Emperor Moth larvae or commonly known as a Christmas Caterpillar.  This guy is probably the size of my index finger so I really wouldn''t want them getting into my garden.  In case you wondered where we saw it.  This one was somewhere along the Sardinia Bay road although I've also seen them on the Fynbos Trail at Schoenies.

Addo's Flightless Dungbeetle

The flightless dung beetle used to be found widespread in Southern Africa but these days is classified as a vulnerable species and only found in Addo Elephant National Park and a couple of other isolated spots.  The beetle is strictly dependent on a number of vertebrates (particularly elephant and buffalo) and when these animals were shot out at the end of the 1800's and beginning 1900's the poor dung beetle population took a huge knock.  These days things are slowly getting better and better for them with the increase and spreading of the elephant population in Addo and the surrounding reserves.

Golden Orb Web Spider

Most of the time I post pictures of historic buildings or beaches so I decided to post of pic of a Black Legged Golden Orb Web Spider today.  The reason for the name is the gold coloured thread they spin their webs with.  Taken with a bit of back lighting you can actually see the golden thread in this pic.  The picture was taken to the west of Port Elizabeth in the Maitland area.

Black Legged Golden Orb-Web Spider

I'm not a big bug fan unless I'm looking at it through my camera, but if I had to choose my favorite spider it has to be the Golden Orb-Web Spider.  They get their name from the gold coloured web that they spin.  I have seen them at Sleepy Hollow before and with this last visit kept an eye out for one as we were walking along the river.  And I wasn't disappointed.