The researchers at the National Museum go on regular field expeditions to collect animals, plants, and fossils for research and to build the collections. Such a field expedition is quite complicated to organise. Here is an example of a field expedition of an approved project to explain the process.
Dung beetles in the tribe Sisyphini represent some of the most charismatic members of the subfamily Scarabaeinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), notable for their distinctive dung-rolling behaviour. The tribe Sisyphini was proposed to accommodate the genus Sisyphus Latreille.
Secretarybirds are loved and admired by birdwatchers, tourists, farmers and conservationists. This bird is also the first bird species which is referred to when I speak with farmers. Secretarybirds are grassland specialists known for catching snakes and killing them by kicking them with pin-point accurate stomps of their powerful feet. They also forage on grasshoppers, rodents, reptiles like lizards and also small birds. They even swallow grassland birds’ eggs like those of francolins and even a Northern Black Korhaan while foraging for food and bring these back to their nests.
I work hard every day to make my beer (umqombothi),
Wake up early every morning to please my people with African beer umqombothi),
I make sure the fire burns to make my beer (umqombothi),
My special beer umqombothi (umqombothi),
Is African beer.
We MaDlamini (everybody),
Uph’umqombothi (come and drink my),
We MaDlamini (magic beer),
Uph’umqombothi”.
(Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s hit song Umqombothi)
With the recent heavy downpours in Bloemfontein and the images and videos thereof popping up all over Facebook, one cannot help but be reminded of one of the biggest disasters to ever hit Bloemfontein, the flood of 1904.
In the early years of Bloemfontein its famous Bloem Spruit regularly flooded its banks after a heavy rainstorm. One bystander described it as follows: “A magnificent sight after a good downpour, the water, brown and foaming, shooting up as it flung itself against the huge boulders in its way, or swirling and eddying around them.” This, however, was under normal circumstances.