The Weekly Recap
Hello and welcome back to the (once again!) weekly recap!
Starting off this week is my dad’s (Jon Hall’s) trip report from China with Forest Musk Deer, Yangtze Finless Porpoise and Chinese Red Panda. I still remember how excited I was the first time he told me he’d seen a Red Panda when I was about 6!
Next is Brendan Fogarty’s trip to Ecuador last July. Including Kinkajous, a Giant Armadillo and a great photo of a Spectacled Bear looking like it’s contemplating breaking into song (probably something along the lines of the necessities to being a bear…), it is a great report.
Finally is this report by Ian Thompson from Madagascar which is absolutely packed full of lemurs – perfect for me as they used to be my favourite animal. Species include Verreaux’s Sifaka, Greater Bamboo Lemur and an adorable mother and child Masoala Woolly Lemur picture as well as some other mammals like the Aye-aye and Peters’s Goblin Bat.
As always, there are a couple new opportunities to join mammal trips. Zhou Fangyi is looking for companions for Gabon in search of Chimpanzees, Yellow-backed Duiker and Forest Buffalo to name a few. Meanwhile Eduardo Ruiz and a friend are going to Bolivia (Tapirs, Capybaras and all 5 wild cats) end of September and would love a couple companions.
The much-anticipated nominations for this year’s NUTTER awards have been revealed, and voting is now open until February 14th – although I would recommend voting before then if I were you, because I know if my partner was a mammalwatcher AND chose to spend Valentine’s Day reading trip reports I wouldn’t be very happy…
My dad has shared a link to a webinar he gave last weekend, Fabulous Beasts and Where to Find Them, all about the progress that has been and is yet to be made in mammalwatching and conservation. I suppose it seems quite interesting even to me, so I will be watching!
This post is wondering whether feral species should be counted on mammal lists, and if so under what conditions. I wonder if in that case a mammalwatcher could be counted on species lists as “willd homo sapiens”, because from experience they do seem to become pretty feral when in the vicinity of some strangely-named bat.
Someone here is wondering what bait people use for shrew trapping. And speaking of shrews, a cool video of an Etruscan Shrew (the 2nd smallest mammal in the world) in a Thai bat cave has been shared here. There is also a great video of a family of Striped Weasels that barely look real – check it out here.
If you want to buy a new thermal scope then here is the post for you! Comparing the pros and cons of many different brands it is very useful.
And lastly, as mentioned last week, land mammals now have their own category on Xeno-canto, a wildlife sound sharing website – some more information is in this post.
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: Masoala Woolly Lemurs – Ian Thompson
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