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.