16 October 2023

The Weekly Recap

Hi everyone, here is this week’s recap!

Starting off with the trip reports as usual, the first was this one from a trip to the Bahamas back in 2021. As all sane people’s trips should be, it wasn’t mammal focused – but as often seems to happen, the disease seeped in in the form of some bats. The two species seen were Buffy Flower Bats and Waterhouse’s Leaf-nosed Bats. 

The only other report is from an amazing trip to Kenya on which 100 mammal species were seen! Some of these include the African Trident Bat, Crested Porcupine and Aardwolf. 

Three Indian Gerbils were seen from just two hours of waiting and watching in Jhimpir, Pakistan, so definitely a good place to try if you want to find this species. I say “only” two hours, but in my family that would’ve been enough waiting for my dad to fall asleep 4 times, my brother and I to take 25 pictures (from several angles) of him sleeping with his mouth open, and for me to lose the will to live. 

This post about state bats is interesting – apparently California has just appointed the Pallid Bat as theirs, and they aren’t even the first US state to be batty enough to do this… 

A super useful map on the best places to find kangaroo rats and mice in California has been shared here. There are coordinates and pictures of the locations based on trip reports, as well as information about how difficult they are to access. This is the type of thing that I would’ve sold my soul for my dad to have read BEFORE taking me on a “short stroll through a forest”, which just kept on going until we were at the top of a very steep mountain… All to see a flying squirrel. As much as he relishes in telling the story of my growing despair from his point of view, just know that apparently he cannot read elevation on a map. 

Finally, Jose Gabriel Martinez-Fonsecs and Charles Hood, two mammalwatchers who you probably know, have published a book! It is a great guide to nocturnal mammalwatching, my personal favourite type (not that there’s much competition), as it is by far the cosiest:) 

If you would like to subscribe only to weekly updates like these from mammalwatching.com, you can visit this page. 

Thanks for reading:) 

Katy

 Cover photo: Zarek Cockar

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Katy Hall
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