John Mendelsohn
Ongava’s social spiders and Gabar goshawks
Although Gabar Goshawks are the commonest birds of prey (or raptor) on Ongava, finding their nests is not that easy. And each time we...
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Blog & News
Update from the field
Stéphanie Périquet
- Aug 22, 2022
- 2 min
Life & death on a roll: dung beetles and honey badgers
Sometimes we come upon curious things while working in the field. It happened a few weeks ago when we noticed strange looking spherical...
William Versfeld
- May 12, 2022
- 2 min
The only Empress moth in the bush...
All living organisms go through stages of growth and reproduction. The emperor moth does its growing and reproducing in remarkable ways....
ORC Intern
- May 4, 2022
- 2 min
Sunday shopping done differently
The mopane worm (Gonimbrasia belina) is an unusual edible little critter found in parts of southern Africa. Its life cycle is...
John Mendelsohn
- Feb 28, 2022
- 2 min
Mopane scale insects
When I came to Ongava in mid-2018 its vegetation was extremely sparse and dry. Little rain fell in the 2018/2019 summer, which led to...
Stéphanie Périquet
- Jan 31, 2022
- 1 min
Creepy-crawlies bonanza‼
The arrival of the rains not only triggers striking changes in the landscape with the vegetation turning from brown yellow to lush green,...
Stéphanie Périquet
- Jan 10, 2022
- 1 min
When the rain gives you wings...
Every year after the first significant rains, we are witnesses to one of Nature's fantastic shows: the flight of termites. This is the...
Florian Weise
- Apr 5, 2021
- 1 min
The Little Things in Life
Say Hello to Eremoides bicristatus, one of southern Africa’s owl-flies. We picked it up at the ORC research campus on Ongava Game Reserve...
John Mendelsohn
- Feb 4, 2021
- 2 min
If only ……. we had made a note of it
One thing biologists often curse is the lack of historical data, especially information recorded methodically on when certain events take...
Stéphanie Périquet
- Dec 25, 2020
- 1 min
Xmas presents: the Emperor Moth & the Mopane Worm
In southern Africa, summer rains bring countless flying, crawling and creeping visitors. But in the Mopane belt, in which Ongava is...
Florian Weise
- Dec 9, 2020
- 1 min
Here be dragons...
The first good rains of the year fell last week on the 4th of December when an unusual weather system reached Ongava. The winds and rain...
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