As I found in the last post, looking closer at movement on flowers sometimes unveils an amazing view of life that normally gets completely missed. This happened again on my recent walk across the battlefield when studying some sour fig flowers on a stop. Again, I was not totally sure of the specie I was looking at, apart from that it was a kind of Beetle.
So I took the opportunity to photograph what I was looking at and upload it on to the app iNaturalist. This is an amazing facility for people out in the bush as when uploaded the siting goes to experts who then respond back with identifications or comments. It was not long before I received replies to my siting confirming this was another of the Monkey Beetle species similar to the Glistening Monkey Beetles seen on top of Blaauwberg Hill. When I checked with my walking guest, Dana, I found that she had also photographed another beetle on a flower very similar to my viewing. Dana’s lovely picture has been set as the featured image and can be seen at the top of this post.
After receiving the identification from the iNaturalist app I decided to do some more checking on line of these beetles. Another fantastic piece of luck was logging in to www.biodiversityexplorer which had a page detailing all the Monkey Beetles. I soon worked out that the beetles we had photographed were Spider Monkey Beetles.
Checking my photos and Dana’s I noticed slight differences in the colouration of the 2 examples and realised that we had actually seen both male and female examples. I will definitely be looking out for more of these great little creatures in upcoming hikes in Blaauberg Nature Reserve.
I can recommend that all people walking in the outdoors should load iNaturalist on to their cellphones. It is such a handy tool for identifying all aspects of nature. It is easily found on your phone in the App Store you have available.
