Southern Lesser Bush baby

Last night we were invited to dinner with Dick and Rina, newbies who've arrived recently in Mwadui. They're South Africans, they're sixty-something and they've just joined the : "we love cats club!"(Two weeks ago during a tropical rainstorm, Dick found two half-drowned kittens on the side of the road. Ambrose - our youngest cat - posted about these kitties last Sunday) 

 Topsy who fell with its paws in the butter and now belongs to Dick and Rina

Tipsy the sibling, already very much at home with its new mom and dad

While we chatted, Dick told me to keep my camera ready and an eye on the tree stump just outside the open front door. There's a hole in which a pair of bush babies live.   Suddenly Dick, Rina and Grant were calling out for me to focus; the bush baby had appeared. No matter how hard I looked I couldn't see it. Then Rina stood behind me and told me to follow her finger pointing straight at it. I was so surprised to see this tiny little face with huge eyes and ears looking out of the nest holes and  down at four excited humans. 

My first photo of the bush baby - facing away from the camera

Then a careful one-eyed peep

A bolder look

Southern Lesser Bush baby

A bush baby has a cry like a human baby, hence the name. It measures head and body at 14-17cm and the tail 11-28cm. The Southern Lesser Bush baby has greyish brown fur with large ears and large orange eyes. They have a dark eye mask, tail and yellowish legs. 

Southern Lesser Bush babies inhabit a band across Southern Africa, including Angola, Zambia and Western Tanzania. They inhabit semi-arid Acacia woodlands,  savanna and forest edges. Here in Mwadui, they live in gardens with no dogs. 

Bush babies are nocturnal and arboreal. (live in trees) They live in groups of between one and five animals but forage alone at night. They eat butterflies, moths and beetles. They sleep in tree hollows during the day.

The gestation period is 121-124 days. After the first pregnancy, the female gives birth to a single baby and then has twins after the following pregnancies. The babies are carried by the scruff of the neck in its mother's mouth for the first 50 days of its life.

Off to forage for the night, it turns around in a last pose for the camera

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend.

Southern lesser bush baby, South African