Hey everyone, I hope you’re well. Apologies for the delay in getting this update out but it has been a busy one! So what have I been up to do I hear you ask? Well one of the tasks I’ve been doing is finishing compiling all of the data I collected this year throughout my field season and trying to make it as succinct and concise as possible. Given the multiple levels of data that I collected, this hasn’t been easy but I am slowly getting there. I’m hoping to start the analysis of this data soon including some population estimates, survival rates and other such parameters.

Those of you that follow me on Instagram or Twitter will know that I’ve also been busy in the lab running the swabs I took from the snakes. I’m about two thirds of the way there and the results I’m getting are quite interesting. I hope in the near future (after I’ve interpreted them and analysed them) that I will be able to share some of them with you. Things have been a little slow going in the lab, due to illness (on my part) and a few other complicated reasons but it’s all coming together. I’m just hoping that it continues to go as smoothly as PhDs are known to often go horribly wrong at this stage.

So what’s next? I’m going to be busy for the next month or so analysing my data and trying to make sense of it as I’m presenting a poster at the World Congress of Herpetology in Dunedin, New Zealand on the topic. If you’re going to be present then please do come and say hi – it’s always great to meet other herpetologists! I’m also going to be busy getting everything ready for my next field season as well, I know it’s a long way off but this year has been very informative and there are some additional pieces of kit I need to source.

It’s all go at the moment, if you want to keep up to date with the smaller updates then please check out #CranwichSnakes on Twitter and Instagram.