Lots of travel in my future

I'm finally done house sitting, so I'm back in my crappy little apartment. Luckily, I won't be there much in the next few months because I'm going to be traveling a bunch! Some of these plans are still tentative, but if everything works out as I hope, my schedule looks something like this:

I've learned recently that it is just about impossible to accomplish anything here around Christmas, so I'm planning on renting a car and going on a little trip from about the 23rd to the 26th. Right now, the leading candidate is Pilanesberg, a nature reserve close by, but that is definitely not set in stone.

I'll then be back in Pretoria for a couple of weeks before heading to Poland to do a couple of research projects with a colleague I've known for several years. That will be my first European trip, and I am definitely excited about it.

Finally, a few days after I get back to South Africa from Poland in late February, Andrew, Ben and I are taking off for a trip to Botswana and some of the really wild parts of the Kalahari. That trip is centered around picking Ben up from his field site, and is otherwise just for fun.

When I finish all of this off, I will be in Pretoria for a while and will unfortunately have to do some actual work. I know, it's rough, isn't it?

A boring couple of weeks

There's nothing too exciting happening my life, but I've gotten quite a few comments about not updating my blog lately, so here goes...

I've been house sitting the last few weeks for Andrew while he's away tromping around Australia. More importantly, I've been slowly digging out from under the pile of work that I've let build up over the last few months and I'm just about to get to the point where I can start working on new projects. It has meant some pretty long days staring at a computer, but I've been able to do quite a bit of work sitting next to Andrew's pool, which is definitely nicer than my office.

In the next few weeks, I hope to get my schedule worked out for the next few months, but no promises. Right now, it looks like I'll be in Botswana in late February and, with any luck, in Poland somewhere around the beginning of February. We are also working on plans for the trip to Brazil in August. Needless to say, my passport is filling up quickly.

Going back to South Africa

Nothing too exciting, just a short update. I've finished up my trip to the US and I'm on my way back to South Africa (I'm actually on the plane right now). I got to see a lot of friends and family while I was back and did more slacking off than I have done in ages.

I'll be back in Pretoria for awhile when I get back, so I should be fairly easy to reach by email or on Skype. Andrew and I got a nice grant a few weeks ago to fund some research on elephant shrews and sunbirds, but we still have to sit down and schedule when everything will happen. I'll keep updating my calender as I figure out where I'll be.

Heading back to the States

Well the last few weeks have been exceedingly pedestrian for me...no trips to the bush, just too many hours staring at a computer screen. It has been relatively productive and I've caught up on quite a bit of work that I had put off while I was buggering around the Kalahari.

The main reason for this post is to update everyone on my schedule the next few weeks. I leave South Africa for the ridiculously long trip back to the States on Sunday afternoon. I arrive in Cincinnati on Monday afternoon and will be teaching bat ID to ESI's crew until Monday, November 2nd, when I fly to Missouri. I'll be in Missouri until I fly back to South Africa on the 18th. As of now, I have nothing planned for my time in Missouri, so if anything exciting is happening, let me know. I won't have a phone while I'm there, but I should be checking my e-mail regularly.

Tswalu was a blast!

What a couple of weeks. Two days after getting back from Madikwe, we turned around and headed back out. Our first stop was the Kalahari Oryx game ranch where one of Andrew's students is working on a pangolin project. Unfortunately, three nights of searching turned up no pangolins, but the area was beautiful and we saw a bunch of other species, including one very close run in with a male lion in the dark. No worries though, Andrew was the one that most likely would have been eaten.

From there, we traveled to Tswalu Nature Reserve in north central South Africa. All I can say is the place is stunning...maybe the coolest habitat I've seen in Africa. It's true Kalahari desert/savanna and it's just made for panoramic shots. We spent most days looking for sites for Ben to do his Ph.D. research. Several evenings were spent on dunes with sundowners watching the sunset on the mountains. Andrew said it best when he opined "It's just another shit day in Africa".

I will be back in Pretoria for a couple of weeks and then I'm heading back to the States for a few weeks. I'll be in Cincinnati for a week training some biologists to identify bat calls before heading back to Missouri to see my parents for two weeks.

I have a ton of pictures that still need to be uploaded going at least back to Madikwe. I have to give a department seminar to the genetics department on Thursday, so I'll be a little swamped getting that ready, but I'll try to catch up soon.

Madikwe was awesome!

So I have to admit the last week has been a rough one. Ben and I spent four days last week bumming around his family's farm outside Mafikeng. His mom spoiled us with obscene amounts of food and we spent one day on a game farm where I caught a bat I had never seen before.

From Mafikeng, we headed to Madikwe game reserve for two nights. Madikwe is a massive reserve that has just about every animal found in southern Africa, including the Big 5 African species. We stayed in a ridiculously swank lodge courtesy of Ben's friend Dave, who works there as a game ranger. Each morning and evening, Dave took us out on game drives and in between we ate unbelievable meals and watched animals around the lodge's waterhole. My species list on this trip is long: elephants, lions, brown and spotted hyenas, nyala, rhinos, giraffes, dwarf mongoose, bush squirrels, snouted cobras, tree agama, countless antelope species, an exceedingly rare yellow-breasted form of the crimson-breasted shrike, and 35 new species of birds. I have hundreds of amazing pictures that I will upload when time permits, but I'm only back in Pretoria for one day before we head to the field to chase pangolins and check out Ben's field site at Tswalu.

A lot of you have e-mailed me in the past week or two and I haven't responded to anything. I'll try to get to the ones I can tonight, but don't expect too much communication from me until the middle of October.

Had a blast today!

We went to the Lory Park Zoo (http://www.lorypark.co.za/) in Midrand today. It's a small, private zoo, but the upkeep and care of the animals is beyond any zoo I've ever seen. The highlight of the day was without a doubt bottle feeding a tiger, but I also played with lions, mountain lions, leopards, caracals, a porcupine, and a handful of other things. Check out my Flickr site for some pictures.

Ben and I are also taking off next week to go back to his farm for a few days and then we are heading out to Madikwe (http://www.madikwe-game-reserve.co.za/), which is a big five reserve where one of his friends is a ranger. It will be my first elephants, lions, buffalo, and black rhinos (among a whole lot of other things) in the wild. We get back from there early next week and promptly turn around and head out to Tswalu and the pangolin project for 10 days.

Life is almost back to normal

My life has been slightly more mundane the last week and nothing horribly exciting has been happening. I've been back in Pretoria long enough that things are starting to calm down a little. We're still feeding elephant shrews and rock rats in captivity for another week or so before we can remove dataloggers from the animals and see if the experiment was a success. I'm absolutely buried after 3+ months in the field, but I'm slowly catching up. I've been working extremely long hours the last few days and I have one manuscript finished and ready to submit this week and two more that will go out in the next week or two.

Otherwise, I'm starting to settle in to living here. I've been watching a fair amount of rugby and I'm learning that South Africans love to have social get-togethers where they almost always braai (barbecue) an absurd amount of meat. Spring is just starting, so everyone wants to be outside and I've got at least four braais scheduled this week. I hate to say it, but I actually feel like a bit of a vegetarian in this country!

Finished at Ezemvelo

We finished up the field portion of the shaving project at Ezemvelo yesterday and it was a complete success. We managed to recapture 14 of the 19 individuals carrying dataloggers, which is about twice as many as I expected. We are having a few more individuals implanted with dataloggers to round out sample sizes then we'll keep them in captivity for a couple of weeks. The second part of the experiment, measuring metabolic rates in the field, was also a success. We got blood samples for 12 rock rats and 8 elephant shrews; now we have to figure out how to get them analyzed. We'll probably have to ship them to the States, which could be interesting.

Otherwise, my life will be a bit more mundane the next few weeks. This will be my longest stint in Pretoria so far. I'm way behind on manuscripts, so I will probably have many long days in the office trying to catch up. On the bright side, I get to look forward to seeing pangolins in a few weeks.

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.

First night in Ezemvelo

I have set up my blog so I can send short updates from my cell. We arrived at Ezemvelo today. It's pretty cool out here...my first 'real' African savannah. So far I've got three new mammals-waterbuck, black wildebeest and cerval as well as 4 new bird species. Ben and I have set 200 small mammal traps and will be checking them throughout the night. More to come in the upcoming days.

Back from Illovo Beach

I spent the last week at the Zoological Society of Southern Africa meeting in Illovo Beach, outside of Durban. The conference was a lot of fun and my talk went well. The meeting was in a resort overlooking the Indian Ocean and I had a nice view of the sunrise each morning from my room (the picture was taken from my window). I made more new contacts than at any meeting I've ever attended and I set up collaborations on bats, birds, and elephant shrews with some of South Africa's top biologists.

We also had some fun outside of the meeting. We took a route known as the Midlands Meander, which is a two-lane road along the face of the Drakensberg Mountains. The Drakensberg are a very cool range of very steep rocks sticking up out of a rolling prairie...unlike anything I've seen in North America. We also skipped out on talks one day to visit Vernon Crookes nature reserve where I saw a bunch of new species. All told, on this trip I got plains zebra, blue wildebeest, vervet monkeys, blesbok, reedbuck and exactly 50 new bird species. I'm back in Pretoria for two days before I'm heading off to the field for 3 weeks, so if you want to contact me, Monday is the day.

A brief update

Well I've finally spent a week in Pretoria. Nothing special...it's just a city. I'm slowly meeting people in the department and have been amazed by the hospitality of everyone I've met.

My big news: I'm making my first trip to the east coast of South Africa this week for the Zoological Society of Southern Africa Meeting in Illovo Beach. I'll see some new habitats, check off a ton of new species on the drive, and see the Indian Ocean for the first time. We return from the meeting on the 26th and I turn around and head back out to the field on the 28th. I'll be in a game preserve near Pretoria shaving elephant shrews and rock rats for 3 weeks. No lions or elephants on this preserve, but a ton of new game species. I've also got a plan in the works to go hunting for some South African game, probably springbok or impala, in August or September. With any luck, I'll get enough biltong (South Africa's version of jerky) out of it to last the rest of my time here!

I've started the map below to show you where I've been and where I'm heading the near future. I'll update it occasionally. If you can't see the markers, try zooming out on the map. You can click on the markers for a bit more detail.


View Where I've been and where I'm going in a larger map

Back in Civilization

I'm finally back in the real world after six weeks in the middle of nowhere. Remote does not begin to describe the area I was in. I had a blast; the research went well, the people I was with were fun, and the area was stunning. I took over 2000 photos and I'll be uploading some of the good ones on my Flickr site as I get time (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jboyles/). I will add more details on the trip later, but as a quick rundown, I ticked off giraffes, white rhinos, yellow mongoose, black spitting cobras, African porcipines, polecats, bat-eared foxes, caracal, African wild cats, three new bat species and 84 species of new birds, among many others. I'll get pictures of those up as I can.

My time in Pretoria will be short, but busy. I'm giving the departmental seminar this Wednesday and I head out for a meeting next Monday. After that, I'll be back in town for one day before I head off to Ezemvelo Nature Preserve (http://www.ezemvelo.co.za/) for 3 weeks to start a project on elephant shrews and rock rats.

I'm sorry if I've been a little lax on responding to e-mails, my internet access was almost non-existant out there. I'll try to catch up with everyone in the next few days and hopefully I'll get Skype up and running this week.

Just a quick update

I've been in the Namaqualand doing research on freckled nightjars and pied barbets the last few weeks. I'm having a blast and the research is going well. I've uploaded a few pictures on my Flickr site if you're interested. These photos are mostly snapshots of what I'm doing...I'll upload the artsy photos when I get back.

If you've e-mailed me and I haven't responded, sorry, I've got very limited internet access. I will be back in civilization in a few weeks and I'll try to catch up with everyone then.

I'm in Africa!

It's been a crazy two weeks for me to say the least. For those of you that didn't hear, I was offered a job interview for an assistant professor position at the University of Vermont just a few days before I was supposed to leave for Africa. I managed to get my flights bumped back a week, only to have my interview canceled at the last minute because of some poor scheduling on their end. Oh well.

I arrived in Pretoria on Friday and after 3 days of jet lag, I'm finally starting to feel like my old chipper self again (stop laughing Dee). I've moved into my apartment, but unfortunately I'm sharing it with a post-doc from the UK right now. He seems like a cool guy, but I'm not all that interested in sharing an apartment, so I'm trying to get them to move me into a single apartment in the same building. On the bright side, it's a short walk to campus and to just about any shopping I'll need to do. Everything on campus is going smoothly. Within an hour of arriving, I had been registered, had medical insurance, and got an ID...all from one office. They even set up my bank account, so all I had to do was run down to the bank and sign for my debit card. People keep telling me it won't continue this smoothly, but after the land of lost paperwork that is Indiana State University, this place is a well-oiled machine. I'm in a huge office that I'm sharing with one other post-doc (that's the picture). I'm slowly meeting people in the department, but there is a semester break right now so not too many people are around.

I spent Saturday at my advisor's house watching the Super 14 rugby finals (sort of a Super Bowl of rugby) and having a braai (barbeque) and biltong (jerky). The local team won, so town was a little crazy that day.

I leave on Thursday to drive most of the way across South Africa to a region called the Namaqualand where we will be chasing freckled nightjars (like our whip-poor-wills) for 3 or 4 weeks. I don't yet know how the internet access will be, but I should be able to check my e-mail at least.

I've gotten e-mails from a lot of you...sorry if I haven't replied, my internet access was a bit limited this weekend. I'll try to respond soon.

Getting close

No real news, but it's a little less than two weeks until I leave so I thought I would add a post. My graduation was Saturday, so I've now officially jumped all the hurdles to becoming a Ph.D. I've finished up the paperwork to get into South Africa, and I'm waiting for my Visa application to be approved. Andrew has gotten all the necessary approvals for the elephant shrew shaving project, so we should be able to start that very soon. It also looks like the trip to the Namaqualand is shaping up, so I will be traveling to the western side of the country shortly after I arrive.

I will be using Skype to stay in touch with people in the States, so if you want to talk to me while I'm there, you'll have to download it and sign up for an account.

Making more plans

My flight has been finalized and my official departure date is May 23. Andrew and I have been making plans for the first couple of months after I arrive. We are starting a project on elephant shrews and rock rats as soon as possible after I arrive. Andrew is also sending me out to the Namaqualand, in northwestern South Africa, to work with his Ph.D. student, Ben Smit. Namaqualand is known for its ridiculous flower blooms, which can cover the area (check out a picture here). Unfortunately, the first time I'm out there, I will miss that, but I hope to get back again. Andrew will also be sending me to the Zoological Society of Southern Africa's annual meeting in July outside of Durban, which is on the coast.

A few dates...

I'm starting to get the scheduling worked out for the next couple of months. My tentative plans are to leave Terre Haute on April 28 to head back to Missouri for a couple of weeks before I go to Africa. As of right now, it looks like I will be flying out on May 23rd (although that can still change), so I'll have almost a month to kill. During that month in Missouri, I plan on doing a lot of fishing and turkey hunting, but I'll still have quite a bit of time and I'd like to see all of my friends and family before I go.

It looks like I'm heading to Africa!

Many of you already know this, but I've basically finished my Ph.D. (I know, finally, right?). I've spent the last year or so considering potential post-doc positions for when I leave ISU and one of the top options has always been at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. I was recently awarded a UP fellowship so the money is available and, barring any big changes in the next month or two (like getting a real job, which is a really long shot), I'm going to take it. That means I will be leaving for Africa sometime in late May and I'll be gone until December 2010.

I will be working with Prof. Andrew McKechnie. Andrew is a fairly young professor, but he's already developed quite a reputation as a top-notch researcher. We will be doing most of our research on birds, but we have ideas for projects involving a couple of crazy little African mammals as well (like elephant shrews--Google them, they're awesome!). There is a possibility that my research could take me to several countries in southern Africa, including Madagascar.

I was thinking about starting a blog to keep friends and family updated on what's going on while I'm there because I'll be 7-8 hours ahead of most of you and communication may be tough. I figured I might as well go ahead and get it started now to keep you all in the loop as I make preparations. Also, for those of you that are interested, I will be posting pictures on my Flickr site (found here).