Field notes, v1307
Page 211
Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. | www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Freeze, 4. 1990 November 7 (continued) Tonight they won't think we are "night dancers." ~1800h a small crowd arrives at our camp bearing an adult Chamaeleo elliotii on a branch, and quite a scene ensues as Bob shows the boy who brought it how to hold the lizard w/out dyin' - one matriarch (his mother?) has a look of extreme revulsion and turns her face away. And the tough old rooster purchased this morning for dinner, skelleted out of Jan's sight as requested. ~2045h we took a big group - all of us and most of the Ugandans - out to look for frogs & snakes. Walking the path and shining my light out over the grassy hills, I got a Chamaeleo elliotii ~3m out on an emergent grass leaf, head facing out. Frogs calling in the farmer's swamp and potato patch, and at 2115h I spotted and caught a juvenile Atheris squamigera ~3m above ground at the swamp border. It was in a circular coil looping over a abreach slightly larger than its own diameter, w/tail pointing along the horizontal branch toward the swamp. Bingo! I just realized my #1 scientific goal for Africa. We also got Bufo (mine was calling on the edge of a water-filled potato patch funnel), Hyperolius and a rocket frog (Hychadaera) in the yam patch. Then trampled all the hell over the landscape, lost some of the time, largely unsuccessfully looking for various calling frogs. Also, to Jens and D's extreme chagrin, waking up farmers, trampling lines through their