Heading home soon

This is likely to be my last update for a while because I'm heading home for a few months. I'm leaving South Africa on the 2 December and arriving back in Missouri late on the 3rd. My plans are mostly open but will revolve around a few commitments. I will be traveling to a conference in Salt Lake City from 1-10 January and I'll be in Winnipeg for a couple of weeks in the middle of February. I also hope to see some friends that are scattered across the southeastern US, but that depends completely on whether or not I get any job interviews. I've got applications in at universities across most of the US and Canada, so I might be in your part of the country at some point as well. Right now, my plan is to come back to South Africa for a few months next year before I (hopefully) start a real job.

I would love to hear from everyone while I'm back, so send me an email or a note on Facebook and I'll give you a call.

A quick update

The last month and half has been absolutely packed with work, largely because I've spent so much time traveling this year that a ton of work has piled up. We recently finished the elephant shrew project that we started shortly after I arrived last year and I've been busy writing the manuscript. I've also managed to get a couple of other manuscripts finished and submitted in the last month, so I'm finally starting to dig out a bit.

To add to the stress, it's job application time and I've been submitting applications left and right to universities all over North America. To that end, I'm going to be heading back to the States for about 3 months this winter. The tentative plan is to arrive in Missouri about the 9th or 10th of December and fly back to South Africa sometime around the end of February. I'll be at a meeting in Salt Lake City the first week of January and I'm going to spend a couple of weeks in Winnipeg working on a project. With any luck, I'll actually have a job interview or two as well. Otherwise, I have no real plans and will probably be looking for something to do during that time and would like to see some of my friends.

Brazil was a blast!

I'm back in Pretoria after three weeks in Brazil. I traveled with Andrew, Ben, and Berry and Hana Pinshow from Israel and have to say the company was definitely a memorable part of the trip. The first week was at a conference in Campos do Jordao. Not much to say about that week...a very average conference in an obscenely expensive resort town.

The second week was spent at the Pantanal Wildlife Center, and wow, was it worth it. The Pantanal is a birdwatcher's paradise, and while I'm not much of a birder, it was still amazing to see. Far cooler than the birds were the giant river otters, giant anteaters, and crab-eating foxes. The entire three week trip was made very worthwhile by a very up close sighting of a large male jaguar while by myself in the bush (sorry about the crappy picture, it was almost dark). That was an experience I won't soon forget.

The third week was at Igauzu Falls. It was an amazing sight, but it was exceedingly touristy and we made the mistake of visiting during the long weekend associated with Brazilian Independence Day, so it was even worse. 

All in all, it was an amazing trip and I would suggest you visit Brazil if you get the chance.

Just a quick roundup

I've been back in Pretoria for a couple of weeks now and have spent the mornings driving back and forth to Ezemvelo to trap elephant shrews and the afternoons and evenings working on digging out from all the manuscripts that have piled up over last few months. The Ezemvelo project went relatively smoothly, and when combined with last year, our sample sizes should now be sufficient to publish that project in a nice journal.

More importantly (at least for me), Andrew, Ben, and I leave for Brazil in 10 days. Our trip will start with 5 days at the International Ornithological Conference in Campos do Jordão near São Paulo. We'll then head to the Pantanal in western Brazil for about a week of bird watching for the ornithologists among us and for me, possible sightings of jaguars, tapirs, giant otters, giant anteaters, and a list of other ridiculously cool creatures. After that, we'll be off to Iguazu Falls on the Brazil/Argentina border for a few days before heading back to South Africa.

No more Namaqualand

I just returned from seven weeks of absolute relaxation in the Namaqualand and I'm trying to readjust to city life. Namaqua was, as always, unbelievable. Ben and I completed the nightjar project and finished a second project on elephant shrews, so hopefully two good publications will come out of all the work. A definite highlight of the trip was stopping by a graduate student's field site to play with a pangolin on the way back to Pretoria (that's her in the picture).

It is now less than one month until I leave for Brazil, which I am very excited about, but I have a ton of work to finish between now and then (I guess that's what seven weeks of slacking off in the Namaqualand gets me). I have several manuscripts that need to be completed and submitted and Ben and I will be going back and forth to Ezemvelo next week to do the second year of the elephant shrew project we started last August.

Otherwise, everything is going to be relatively dull for me for the next few weeks and I'll be easy to contact.

Namaqualand Again

It's been awhile since I got an update posted, so here we go. I got back from Poland at the end of April, and have to say that trip was a complete success. I then had two days in Pretoria before I headed out to the Namaqualand to catch freckled nightjars and elephant shrews. Our original plan was to be there for two weeks, but we had so much trouble catching animals that we added a third week and still ended up with less than half the animals we were hoping for...sometimes biology is hard. I've been back in Pretoria for a few days now trying to dig out from under all the work that piled up while I was gone. We turn around and go back to the Namaqualand around the first of June to spend two months doing research. I can't wait, I love that place a little more each time I visit! Once I get to the Namaqualand, I will have very little email access, so contact will be limited.

Just a few more days in Poland

My time in Poland is quickly coming to an end and I'll be heading back to South Africa early next week. My time here has been interesting--definitely a very different culture than the one in which I grew up. Michal has been a great host and we accomplished quite a bit with the experiment, let's just hope the data tell a good story. We went to the Old Town today, which is the original part of Torun. Absolutely amazing architecture and a very cool feel to the place, along with some neat history (it's the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus, which is the statue in the foreground of the picture). I took a bunch of pictures, but can't upload most of them until I get back to SA.

I will only be back in Pretoria for 2 days before I turn around and head to the Namaqualand for 12 days. I am unbelievably excited about that because it's still my favorite place in southern Africa. Unfortunately, during that time, contact will be a bit limited.

Hanging out in Poland

I've been in Torun, Poland for about a week now working on a bank vole project. The project is going well and the voles are definitely easier to work on than mole-rats, although cleaning cages everyday does take considerably longer.

Poland has been interesting so far--I've had a couple of new, and umm, interesting foods since I've been here. It's been nice to experience, but it's not a diet I would want to live on long term. We took a drive to northern Poland last weekend so I got to see a fairly nice chunk of the country. The landscape roughly resembles the Midwest, with a lot of farms and small woodlots. There were a lot of neat old buildings and small, rustic towns along the way. I'm still trying to get away for a few days to see either another country or another part of Poland. It looks like we are going to try to catch some bats if the weather warms up, so I may get my first European species on this trip!

Coming to the end of a busy research schedule and the beginning of a lot of traveling

Just a quick update. The last month has been filled by an ongoing research project on mole-rats that has meant most of my time has been spent feeding animals, cleaning cages, and fixing everything that the mole-rats have chewed up. I leave next week for Poland to do a superficially similar project on bank voles, which will hopefully cause less trouble than the mole-rats. I get back to South Africa on the April 28th, but turn around and leave for the Namaqualand on the May 1st for 12 days. Ben and I are capturing freckled nightjars for an extension of the project we did out there last year and we are adding a project on elephant shrews this year. The Namaqualand is still my favorite place in southern Africa, so I can't wait to get back out there.

The wilderness of Botswana

Well unfortunately, I'm back in Pretoria after a week in the Kalahari of Botswana and South Africa. We traveled with 9 people-Andrew, Ben, and Jorge from Pretoria and a some of Andrew's friends from Cape Town. The company was great and thanks to Jill, Ben, and Cilla, the food was unbelievable.

We started the trip with a night at Tswalu before driving on sand roads to Mabuasehube in Botswana. Three nights of camping there in a remote site with no fences to keep the animals away led to close night time encounters with hyenas, black-backed jackals, cape foxes and a honey badger. From Mabua, we traveled over 200 km (125 miles) on two track road across the dunes to Nossob camp on the South Africa side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. We spent two nights there, where the highlight was the lion waking us up at 4 AM by roaring close enough to camp you could almost feel the vibrations. We found him about 500 meters from camp later in the morning. Another night at Tswalu on the way back finished off the trip. All in all, it was an amazing trip that I won't soon forget.

The upcoming weeks and months will be exceedingly busy for me. We've got two projects-one on mole-rats and one on sunbirds-starting in the next week and it looks like I'll be in Poland from the 7th to the 27th of April. Until then, I'll be in Pretoria, so I'll be easy to contact.

Back from supervising a field trip in Rustenberg

I spent the last four days as one of the responsible adults on a field trip for the incoming group of Honour's students. We took them to Kgaswane Nature Reserve just on the edge of Rustenberg. The purpose of the trip was partly for everyone to get to know each other and partly for the students to learn some new field techniques, which meant we got to catch quite a few cool animals. Most exciting for me was an African yellow bat, which I have never seen before, but we also caught small mammals, birds, snakes, lizards, bees, and frogs.

I'll be in Pretoria for the next 3 weeks before Andrew, Ben and I are taking off for a week in the Kalahari desert of Botswana.

An amazing two days of hiking!

Andrew and I just got back from two days of hiking in the Wolkberg mountain range looking for blue swallows. In total, we hiked about 22km-14km in Wolkberg Nature Reserve and then another 8 in Lekgalameetse Nature Reserve. The swallow's natural habitat is high montane grasslands, so spent a lot of time hiking up steep mountains to get to the top and along the way we got an endless series of unbelievable views. To say these two parks are remote would be an understatement. We didn't see anyone in either park in vehicles or on foot. Today, we came out the back side of Lekgalameetse and it took us over two hours to crawl along 10km in Andrew's Land Cruiser. In the end, I have to say the Wolkberg range is an amazing place and one I hope to see again. I didn't carry my camera much because of the terrain, but I'll post what pictures I did take in the next few days.

The holidays are finally over, now more travelling

I spent my Christmas running around Pilanesberg Game Reserve chasing elephants in an Audi...not a bad way to spend the break I guess. I haven't had great internet service since I've been back, so I've been slow getting pictures on Flickr. The completely empty building has, however, made work more efficient and I've managed to get a long ways on a couple of manuscripts.

Andrew and I leave early next week for Lekgalameetse Nature Reserve to look for highly endangered blue swallows. Lekgalameetse is apparently in a beautiful mountainous area and will definitely be unlike any of the other places I've visited in southern Africa. Poland still looks like it will happen at the end of the month, but we have to work out some funding issues before I can make definite plans.