Pretoria, South Africa to the Drakensberg Escarpment chasing Cistugo

Merlin and I flew from Austin to Houston, Texas last Tuesday the 25th of March, and flew overnight to Frankfurt, Germany,  waited 11 hours in the airport and then caught another overnight flight to Johannesburg, where we were met by colleagues Teresa and Ernest Seamark. After a day of rest at the Seamarks’ home outside of Pretoria, we’re loading up the vehicles with all of our equipment, and we’ll go in search of Lesueur’s wing-gland bat (Cistugo lesueuri) on the Drakensberg Escarpment, where these bats live in cliff-face crevices. We will spend the next week attempting to net and photograph these bats. They are quite difficult to catch with only approximately 30 specimens in museums. We are hopeful that we will catch them, but have our fingers crossed because it is autumn and quite rainy, making it a challenge to catch these bats. It’s mostly open area near a reservoir, so not an easy place to net bats, and these bats are seldom caught, so we’re allowing a week and hoping we can catch one by using a 100-foot long by 26-foot tall mist net. Wish us luck!