The Green Ogre: jungle lodges

I came across this miracle of nature towards the fag end of my supposedly "spend-time-with-family" trip to BR Hills. At the Jungle Lodges camp, I was about to return to my room after breakfast when our safari jeep driver called out to me. He pointed to something on a tree, saying it was a Southern Flying Lizard (Draco dussumieri).

Can you spot the lizard?

Well, I looked at four tree trunks over and over for a couple of minutes before I could spot it. There it sat on the tree trunk closest to me, and there was absolutely no way I would have spotted it had it not been pointed out.

On the dull, ash-brown coloured trunk, interspersed with mottled lichen patches, I could make out a basilisk foot... As my eyes traced out the borders, I could slowly spot the other leg, the body and the tail. The head was the toughest to decipher from the background.

And now?

I changed my vantage point and tried a lateral perspective but I was amazed to find that so pressed was the lizard to the trunk that barely an outline was visible that would betray its presence. I waited to see if it would display its marvellous tree-to-tree glide, without luck. But in the end I considered myself lucky to have had such a good look at this amazing reptile!

Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan

Further reading:
Southern Flying Lizard on Wikipedia and the Reptile Database

Driving in the beautiful Biligirirangans can be equally exhausting and enchanting!

Drove with the family for the first time to my favourite forest in Karnataka last weekend. Wandered desperately for 40 km between Yelandur and Chamarajnagar looking for a fuel station because we forgot to top up at Mysore. We had a flat tyre outside the park gate on the way in, which delayed our lunch and made us all crabby. Blew up a freelancer's fortune on the acco at Jungle Lodges, went on two safaris (uneventful but for a lung-aerating drive), paid our respects to the presiding deities at K Gudi and Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple, and returned to the city morose via the very picturesque Kanakapura Road.