And we call it field work.
Man, Chapter 1 and i have some serious love-hate relationship. On one hand, the writing is mind-numbing. You can only make so much prose out of a list of specimens. But at the same time, it makes me dig through old field photos to confirm the species identification. And then photos like these ones pop up and i'm reminded how awesome my field work was.
This beach is on the island of South Pagai, just a few yards from a village called Bulasat. It faces the Indian ocean and gets some good surf breaks, but it makes it difficult for dipping. Every day we'd walk out to the beach and hike for about 45 min-1 hr to get to our field site, and walk home at dusk to sunsets like this. If we timed it right, we get to catch a glimpse of thousands of giant flying foxes (they're fruit bats, really) darkening the skies as they fly out of their roosts and begin their nightly forage. It was mind blowing and amazing. Just one of the many reasons i love doing what i do...
Photos by my advisor, Jim McGuire.