In total we had 52 attending the CRR 2024 School Holiday Programme over the four days in July 2024.

We hope that all the children who attended have happy memories of the time they spent with us in the CRR and have taken away with them a deeper understanding of the natural world, and the importance of caring for it. It was an absolute privilege to have each and every one of them here, and we hope we get the opportunity to see them again at another one of our School Programme initiatives. It would be impossible to
convey to those reading this post everything the children experienced and did, so please take the time to look through the diary of photos. A picture can truly speak a thousand words.

The 2022 photography event with Shane Rourke proved that an excellent way to experience nature is through the lens of a camera, even if that camera is on your phone.

Regardless of whether you were a complete novice or an experienced photographer you went away having learned something new. Everything from technical questions, the correct lens for a specific subject, and features and apps on your phone for editing was covered in this interesting and informative talk.

Over 40 people attended the Urban Wildlife talk by the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital and Rehabilitation Facility. This event was held on Sunday the 18th April 2021. Everyone involved deemed it an absolute hit. It was wonderful to see the number of children in the audience who participated with great enthusiasm!

The Tree Walk held in the Crocodile River Reserve offered an insightful and easy to understand introduction to the day, starting with the structure of leaves and how to use this to identify a tree. What followed was a walk through the beautiful veld of the Reserve during which we identified a variety of trees – such as the fascinating underground tree Lannae Aedulis, the Diospyros Lycioides (Blue Bush), the common but beautiful Acacia Karroo (Sweet Thorn) and the Protea Caffra Trees but to name a few.

The ripe fruits of the Ximenia Caffra or Sourplum are eaten by birds such as barbets, bulbuls and starlings and mammals such as giraffe, impala, kudu, grey duiker, steenbok, bushbuck and eland enjoy eating it’s leaves. The larvae of a number of butterflies feed on the leaves, some examples being the Bush Scarlet butterfly, Natal and Silvery bar, Bowker’s and Saffron sapphire and the Brown playboy.

Lannea edulis has shiny green leaves that are hairy when young and leathery when matured, with creamy white flowers from August to October. It bears bright red ovoid berries from October to December that become purplish black when they become ripe, which have a juicy and pleasantly sour flavour and are eaten by mice, birds and humans.

The Buffalo Thorn Tree is widely used for magical and medicinal purposes because of the spines or thorns, which are paired; One is hooked, and the other is straight. According to Nguni legend, the thorns of the Ziziphus tell us something about ourselves – that we must look ahead to the future (straight thorns) but we must never forget where we have come from (hooked thorns).

After months in lock-down, it was a joy to get back outdoors and into nature, as our creepy crawly expert, Jonathan Leeming, shared fascinating facts about why all arachnids should be treated with respect rather than fear.

The Cape skink is live-bearing and the female may take up to a week to birth her litter of offspring – often between 8 and 18 per brood. Each baby is born in a thin, membranous bag or ‘shell’ that it breaks out of within seconds. Newborns measure measure 5 to 7 cm.

The blesbok or blesbuck has a distinctive white face and forehead which inspired the name, because bles is the Afrikaans word for a blaze such as one might see on the forehead of a horse.