This has been my sometimes workplace for the last two weeks:

The slopes of Mt. Gilboa. Watsonia densiflora in the foreground.

To catch pollinators in action you need fine weather. On those days when the skies are clear and there’s little more than a gentle breeze in the air, Mt Gilboa is an exciting place to be. Gleaming green Malachite sunbirds chase one another between aloes, eagles and vultures wheel overhead, a startled bush buck bounds down the slope and out of view.

On these days the flowering veld is humming with the noise and motion of uncountable beetles, bees, flies and wasps, flitting, buzzing, mating and feeding. Protea heads crawl with furry monkey beetles, massive grasshoppers zoom by on the wing and bees of varied colour, shape and size forage diligently.

The flowering veld

I come here to collect long tongue flies. As you prowl among the Watsonia inflorescences you first hear the telltale loud buzz, then look for the hovering fly probing a flower with its long proboscis.

Philoliche aethiopica is a specialist forager on Watsonia densiflora. This fly’s thorax is completely covered in pollen.

Netting the flies is not too difficult—they are lazy fliers. Keeping them alive in my flight-cage back closer to sea level has proved to be the big challenge. With the season wrapping up for this site, I’m unfortunately looking at the possibility of coming away with little more than just jars of dead flies.

Watsonia lepida, common veld iris and long tongue fly host plant.

Despite the setback there are other research avenues to pursue as the Summer field season unfolds. The luxury of a long field season is one factor that makes this veld such a productive place to study pollination.