Dear all,

It's been a very busy year and I've been remiss in my duties to the
ERSG for the past few months - for that I apologise. Since
mid-September I've been back at work as a lawyer in Darwin in the Top
End , 1500km away from my home here at Yuendumu in central Australia.
We've been very busy with a change in Federal Government, changes at
the top of the Northern Territory government and with substantial
changes to the administration of the Northern Land Council, the
statutory authority that I'm working for that is responsible for the
management of the thousands of square kilometres of Aboriginal land
and sea in the top half of the NT.

Apart from returning to work (hopefully my stint will be over in a
month or so and I can devote more attention to ethnoorn!) it has been
a great year for ethnoornithology.

First my travel - In late March & early April I attended and presented
at an ethnoornithology symposium at the 30th Society of Ethnobiology
conference at Berkeley in California then with my partner Gloria had a
wonderful two weeks driving through the backroads of New Mexico and
Arizona.

Then in May I was off to Maturin in Venezuela for the 8th Neotropical
Ornithological Conference, where I was a co-chair of another
ethnoornithology session and had the pleasure of meeting new
colleagues from across south and central America.

In June I returned, via the UK, to attend and present at a workshop at
the Institute for the Sociology of Law at Onati, outside Bilboa in the
Basque country the back to the UK to travel up to Cambridge to give a
presentation at the Birdlife International offices there. Thanks to
John Fanshawe of BI we had a wonderful dinner and a few ales with
Martin Walsh (another ethnoornithologist specialising, like John, in
east African bird knowledge) and Mark Cocker. Mark is working on an
international version of his wonderful book, Birds Britannica (more on
this matter in another post).

I managed to spend a few months back at home before traveling up to
Darwin to start work back at the NLC fgor a few months, until October,
when I flew via Perth and Johannesburg to Nairobi in Kenya. There I
was the guest and (honoured and flattered) keynote speaker at the 1st
Ethnoornithology Conference at the National Museums of Kenya at Nairobi.

End of Part 1 - Gloria tells me that we have to take the dogs for
their Christmas Eve walk - I'll look out for the Spotted Nightjars and
Wedegtailed Eagles that have been a regular sighting on these
walks...back soon.

Cheers and best,

Robert Gosford
ERSG moderator