Reader Benjamin Taylor sent a huge number of photos from Africa (see his portfolio), and it will take at least four posts to get through the rest of them. So I am putting them up at intervals in carefully apportioned dollops. He sent this in October and noted, “Last month I went on a camping trip around southern Africa (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia) and took quite a few photographs.”

Black-faced impala (Aepyceros melampus petersi):

Southern yellow-billed hornbill (Tockus leucomelas):

Springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis):

Plains zebra (Equus quagga) [JAC: why is is striped?]:

Giraffe and zebra heading for their sundown drink:

Black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis):

Reader John Scanlon sent a humongous insect (it needs identification!), a jellyfish, and a cute marsupial:

I recently saw this insect on Rottnest Island, off the coast of Perth in Western Australia. Thought at first it was a cicada based on size and the sound of its flight, but seems to be either a weird wasp or a wasp-mimic robber-fly. Huge, about 80 mm long, which is its most notable feature.

 Also found out there’s a kind of small box-jellyfish (cubomedusan, Carybdea xaymacana) known locally as ‘stingers’ (very imaginative) very abundant on the beach nearest the campground; not one of the deadly kinds, so it’s been kept pretty quiet. I wondered initially if it was a southern range extension of Irukandji due to climate change & El Niño, but fortunately a different species.

This shot shows a small individual on my hand*, which shows the tentacles at four corners and eye-spots on each side. They are very active swimmers and clearly respond to stuff going on around them.
*Didn’t feel any cnidae puncturing my palm, but got stung on various softer surfaces on another day, when I couldn’t see ’em.

Rottnest is best known (and named, in Dutch) for the dense population of Quokkas, tiny cute kangaroos (Setonix brachyurus) that are rare on the mainland southwest. The population is probably much too dense, because they have no terrestrial predators: apparently the Nyoongar people of the Perth area didn’t use the island much or at all in the last few thousand years, and it lacks species such as Western Quoll (Dasyurus geoffroii) or Carpet Python(Morelia spilota imbricata) that might be able to keep quokka populations low enough for their food plants to regenerate. These days the seedling trees and shrubs need to be fenced off to survive to adulthood.