2013 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 70,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to contribute to this blog over the past year. You all help make our mammal watching trips more successful and more fun. Who has exciting plans for next year? I’m looking forward to heading to the Dominican Republic with Vladimir Dinets and Fiona Reid in January to look for Solenodons, to Nicaragua in February, and hopefully Peru in April.
Happy New Year and looking forward to lots more reports and discussion in 2014!
jon
7 Comments
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Stefi
I wish you all a great mammal year!
We’re going to Morocco and Western Sahara at the end of this month. In the summer we’re hoping to go back to South-East Asia to try again for clouded leopard and all the other jungle goodies. We also still have some species closer at home to look for. I’d like to see a hamster and definitely hazel dormouse should be possible!
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John Fox
Happy New Year to all from me, too.
My July sailboat trip to Sable Island and the gulley just got cancelled, so I’m kind of up in the air.
If I can figure out a good itinerary Baffin Island is high on the list; don’t really want to do the week long floe edge trip, I think I would be really frustrated/bored.
August is a good time to try for Vancouver Island Marmot, a guy got in touch who has some insider info so I’m optimistic.
There are lots of marine mammals of the southern ocean I want to see, if a discount fare to Antarctica comes along that would be tempting.
And like a birding pal who is keen to try for Spoonbill Sandpiper before it goes extinct,
Vaquita and Mediterranean Monk Seal are always in the back of my mind.Good luck in your travels in 2014,
John
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Jon Hall
Hi John, I am planning a trip to the pacific NW around Labour Day and was thinking I’d go take a look for the Marmots for a day then. When are you planning on going? I was aiming to spend Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 August looking for them if you wanted to meet up? And I have some info on Mediterranean Monk Seals too near the border of the Western Sahara and Mauritania,
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John Fox
That might work out, Jon. I haven’t done any planning but I’ll get in touch with the guy and make sure he’s still on board.
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white1985
Has anyone actually tried for the monk seals? It doesn’t seem like an easy thing to go and see them. As far as I can tell, you’d have to travel through Mauritania to get to the colony, even though the colony itself is in Western Sahara. With a rental car, that might get tricky. Even if you make it that far, it doesn’t seem that there is a decent road leading close enough to the coast. With all the land mines everybody always warns you about, getting to the water seems to be quite an adventure too…
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John Fox
There used to be a wikitravel page on Nouadhibou that said the city was fine to be in and get around, and you could drive to the end of the peninsula and at such and such national park you could see the seals. A real casual mention of it.
There are regular cars/buses from Nouakchott to Nouadhibou, although its recommended to caravan with other people.
This page says Nouadhibou is part of Mauritania and has some info, but it’s not the same one I found before.
http://wikitravel.org/en/Nouadhibou
Not a box of chocolate but it seems doable, and a good adventure.
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vdinets
Happy New Year! I have a few alternative plans for the summer, but don’t know which one I’ll be able to realize. The most interesting one is Philippines-Malaysia-Sulawesi-PNG, the most affordable one is northwestern USA in June and Ecuador-Peru-Bolivia in July-September.