One more trip to Ezemvelo

We're back in Ezemvelo for the week to recapture the animals carrying dataloggers. I finally saw rhinos up close today. They were right on our trapline along with a fresh leopard kill. We will be checking traps throughout the night, so it might get interesting.

Back from Ezemvelo

We have finished up most of the elephant shrew/rock rat experiment in Ezemvelo. We have to go back next week to recapture our animals and remove the temperature-sensitive dataloggers they are carrying. It was a fun project and a cool place. The one negative was the ongoing battle with vervet monkeys that repeatedly broke into our kitchen and destroyed our food, with little response from the staff. My list of animals included blue and black wildebeest, red hartebeest, impalas, water buck, duikers, plains zebra, brown hyena, meerkats, and 28 new bird species, among others.

We are also in the process of registering for the International Ornithological Congress next August in Campos do Jordão, Brazil, near São Paulo. We are planning on staying for an extra week or two to see some of the country. It will be my first trip to South America, which I'm excited about.

I've also added a few new gadgets to the right side of the blog with hopes that it makes it easier to keep track of me. I'll try to keep the calender updated as my schedule fills up.

Still shaving elephant shrews

We have one more week in Ezemvelo shaving elephant shrews and rock rats--the experiment is going very well other than the fact that elephant shrews are a pain to recapture. Regardless, they are still the coolest little animal I've ever worked with. We will be back in town next Wednesday and I'll be around for most of the next month. We go back to Ezemvelo the first week of September to recapture animals carrying temperature dataloggers and then leave the first week of October to go catch pangolins in the central part of South Africa.

In other news, Bats of Missouri, which I wrote with John Timpone and Lynn Robbins is in the final stages of preperation. It is at the publisher now and they hope to have the final layout in the near future. The cover is finalized and I don't think it looks too bad, although I'm not a huge fan of the red.

Back in Ezemvelo

I spent the last four days in bed in Pretoria because of some nasty
pneumonia-like illness, but I'm back in Ezemvelo now. We released 20
animals implanted with dataloggers and we're getting ready to start
our second experiment today. Otherwise, we're spending all our time
fighting the vervet monkeys that live behind our lapa. I'll be back in
town occassionally over the next few weeks, so I shouldn't be too hard
to contact.