S3 E13: Venkat Sankar & Nicole Haseley’s Big California Year
Description
Charles and Jon talk with mammalwatching power couple Venkat Sankar & Nicole Haseley from their base at Stanford University in California.
Nicole and Venkat ‘accidentally’ turned 2024 into a Big California (Mammal) Year and ended up seeing a record breaking 150 species in the state by December 31.
They talk about some of their big year’s highs and lows as well as their favourite places in California to mammalwatch, and offer advice on how to identify small mammals in the field.
Plus Nicole explains why browsing iNaturalist pictures in public can be a fast track to romance.
Notes
A Big Year – a concept well known among birders – sees participants look for as many different species as possible within a geographic boundary (in this case California). Venkat and Nicole’s Big Year report is here (there are many more California reports here). Meanwhile Charles’s epic 2019 Big Mammal Day report from Tanzania is well worth a read!
A report from Charles’s Royle Safaris’ trip to Ghana will eventually arrive here.
The ethical mammalwatching cartoons Jon mentioned are here.
Cover art: Venkat & Nicole