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.