During our walks in Isalo we spotted several interesting plants and animals. We covered both the sandstone plains and I trekked in a river gorge. For a few of the photos I describe what it is we spotted.
The Madagascar Crested Coua is endemic to Madagascar. It is known for its striking plumage. The most eye-catching feature is the blue skin patches around its eyes and a crest on its head, which has given it its name. It lives in dry forest and scrubland, spending most time in the trees, but can also forage on the ground as seen in my images here. It is of the cuckoo family, but isn’t parasitic, that is, it doesn’t lay its egg in other birds’ nests. It has a unique toe arrangement: two toes are facing forward and two backwards. This helps them grip branches efficiently, when they move through trees.
And this is another unique and very interesting plant. It is named Pachypodium rosulatum and resembles a miniature baobab tree. It is often called “Elephant’s Foot”, as its size and form resembles the foot of an elephant, a large massive bowl of wood from which sprouts tiny branches and leaves. It can as well sprout yellow flowers, although I wasn’t there in the right time to see any “flowering elephant foot”.
Another “elephant foot” growing next to a rock that looks like it was manmadebut isn’t
A type of cactus that I don’t know anything about growing among the stones
A ring-tailed lemur among the dry tree branches with only a few leaves covering it
And another lemur sitting high up in a tree
A pandanus tree. Their long leaves are an excellent roof materialA view of the valley with a mountain with its sheer sides behind
A chameleon was running across my footpath
And driving to catch the sunset a Guinea Fowl crossed our way and we stopped to capture this image
Where the foliage became tighter I saw two lemurs up in the trees
And a beautiful chameleon nicely silhuetted against the sky
