“There is a strange ecto on this vesper”, said the mammalogist, a sentence that only recently would have been difficult for me to comprehend. But now, after a few years of rubbing shoulders with mammalogists in Gorongosa I osmotically absorbed enough jargon to understand that she had noticed an interesting parasitic insect on a bat…
Category: Mammals
Mozambique Diary: Not all flies fly
After a long hike in the scorching heat of the African savanna the cool, shady patch of tall miombo forest looked like heaven to us. I was in the southern part of Gorongosa, looking with a few friends for some elusive species of arthropods. But we were having little luck finding any and after several…
Mozambique Diary: Shooting bats
My entire last month was a blur of hectic activity, related mostly to the opening of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Laboratory in Gorongosa National Park. This kept me from updating the blog, but it was definitely worth it – the Lab is a fantastic facility that will serve as a research base to current and…
Mozambique Diary: Heroes, and what bugs them
One early morning, while on the Cheringoma Plateau, an invited mammalogist came running into the camp. “We caught something really good in our traps!”, the mammalogist announced breathlessly, sending the media team that was filming our expedition into a state of frenzied excitement. Everybody rushed to see the mystery animal, whose identity the person refused…
Mozambique Diary: Golden bats
Tomorrow marks the first official day of the Gorongosa Biodiversity Survey on the Cheringoma Plateau. All participating scientists are arriving, and the following morning we will depart for the first, northernmost site. But even before we get to those remote and unexplored areas, some of us have been already collecting interesting data. Earlier today a…
Mozambique Diary: It’s good to have my gear back
To celebrate the miraculous recovery of my photographic equipment from the clutches of South African Airways, today I took my new Canon 400mm for a short spin around the Chitengo camp. I usually do not photograph birds and mammals, but there are so many of them around that it would be a shame not to…
The Smaller Majority 