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.