Mozambique Diary: I have fallen and I can’t get up

The best part of traveling with a group of biologists in a place like the Cheringoma Plateau is the impossibility of ever being bored. Not only can you witness hilarious and exotic injuries (where else do people get bitten by bats?), but every day brings new discoveries of things you never thought existed. At our…

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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…

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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…

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Mozambique Diary: Is this tortoise broken?

Some time ago I was driving in Gorongosa when I noticed a large tortoise laying in the middle of the road, stuck upside down in the mud. The animal was alive but had what appeared to be a large wound in the posterior part of its cracked carapace. There were fresh tracks of a civet…

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Mozambique Diary: Sylvan katydids of Gorongosa

A few nights ago, as I was walking towards my cabin along the edge of the Chitengo Camp, I heard a call of a cricket that I did not quite recognize. Cricket calls are unmistakable for their clean, almost melodious quality, very different from the call of a cicada or a katydid, which tend to…

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Mozambique Diary: Manticora

Things have been busy here in Chitengo, and I am struggling to find time to update the blog amidst the preparations to our upcoming biodiversity survey of the Cheringoma Plateau. But I simply cannot resist mentioning one of the most remarkable creatures that I have had the pleasure to meet in Gorongosa. Every biologist has…

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