Getting Shrewed

A (likely) Greater Red Musk Shrew (Grootrooimuskusskeerbek - Crocidura flavescens) at Sonstraal Farm

2015 turned out to be a rough year.

It started out fine, but somewhere along the line it got derailed.

From about the middle of the year more and more of my energy was going towards dealing with some unfortunate changes that took place at work. It is always hard for me to deal with things outside of my control, especially when it effects things important to me. As a result I was left with little energy to spend on my camera trapping and other hobbies. I also didn't plan any vacation trips either and slowly things just kept on spiraling downwards.

A (suspected) Forest Shrew (Bosskeerbek - Myosorex varius) at Koeberg Nature Reserve

The energy I could muster was spent on upgrading the mapping functionality in WildLog. Progress has been slow, but it is finally starting to take shape. I'm really looking forward to wrapping it up and to start using it with my real dataset. I have a fun idea for a blog post about it when the programming side of things gets wrapped up.

Again the (probable) Forest Shrew

I had some Shrew photos lying around which I wanted to post. Identifying Shrews can be soooo hard. I really get the impression that not all species are well defined yet. Very little information is available for some species, and I'm sure that other listed species are most likely more than one real species grouped together.

The (plausible) Greater Red Musk Shrew in almost all its glory

Looking ahead, I have an exciting holiday trip planned for late April. I don't think I'll get to any camera trapping before then, but when I get back I would like to start a new camera trapping project.

Until then I'll most likely focus on wrapping up WildLog and maybe see if I can do an interesting day trip or two towards the end of summer when things cool down a bit (it's been a hot summer).

Is this (possible) Forest Shrew a stargazer?