Kiota
After being on the road for a couple of weeks it was good to plop down for a real rest. Douglas brought us all back to Kiota Guest House where were greeted with a big smile by Flora and the rest of the crew. Ram, Uri and Dawn collected the belongings they had cached on the way in, and Douglas took them to the airport for their flights,
Sid spent the evening packing for his climb of Mt. Meru starting the next day. We all enjoyed watching the Bush Babies that Flora puts bananas out for by the trees behind the house. I'm guessing they are Brown Greater Galagos but they could be Silvery Greater Galagos, a relatively newly separated species.
Sid was picked up the next morning by the guide for his climb; Dona and I spent the day resting up and poking about the neighborhood. We found a few hornbills and butterflies, but as usual the really cool butterflies wouldn't hold still for a photo. The day was partly cloudy but cleared off towards the end. Given all the rain we had been having we were keeping our fingers crossed that Sid would have good weather and good views on his summit day.
We found this really nice lady-bug looking kind of bug. This one was sort of a "negative" version of the one we are more familiar with, as it has orange spots on a black body, whereas the lady-bug/lady-bird beetles we usually see (and most ladybird beetles), have orange bodies and black spots. We thought we found it in our East African Bug book, "Insects of East Africa" by Dino J. Martins, where it looks like a "Potato Bug Beetle," of genus Epilachna. However, I couldn't find any potato-bug beetles that looked like this one so I finally wrote Dr. Martins a note and he replied that it was
"one of the Shield Bugs, in the Order Hemiptera, many of whom do look like beetles. The difference is the formation of wings on the back (no elytra as in beetles) and the piercing and sucking mouthparts - which are not visible in the photo."
I looked at large number of photos on iNaturalist and could not find anything resembling it which are indicated as being in Africa, unfortunately. Bummer. But on the up-side, I learned what elytra are, and that they are a distinguishing characteristic between beetles and other bugs, so all was not lost. Despite all that, if you want to see some really cool looking bugs, take a look at the images here.
There were also some pretty impressive blow flies.
Douglas was scheduled to pick us up the next day with his wife; the four of us would do some exploring on the west side of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
