A Batty Weekend

The weekend turned out to be hugely interesting although it was in front of the pc at home. I had posted a request for information on a forum about the species of bats in Rwanda and received a reply that made my jaw drop.

This reply I received had a list of bat species for Rwanda but there was a note stating that it was considered incomplete and more species await "discovery" - the list contained 48 species! That's incredible considering the country's size and included a Rwandan endemic! I immediately set to work to formalise the list a bit i.e. on a spreadsheet and then started collecting information on the species and bats in general.

What an education! I knew bats were very interesting and actually quite intelligent mammals but I spent every other moment gaping about some other information about bat behaviour and some great bat trivia. This culminated on Sunday morning with a basic document compiled on general info on bats and a checklist containing some pics/drawings of different species.

This got me going on some of the other checklists I've collected, collated and/or compiled from a variety of sources including frogs and birds and the start of the reptile checklist, the latter being compiled as we go along and are able to identify species.

Sunday evening, one of the overland tour groups came over to the house with their crew for a BBQ and a dvd on the gorillas. A pleasant evening indeed and lovely end to a weekend that I felt like a kid in a toy store with all the new information on our natural history here.