Colin Donihue

Hi Everyone, 

I recently spent a couple of excellent days islet hopping off of Schinoussa. This involves riding in a fisherman’s boat to a few small deserted islets, jumping ashore while the boat is bobbing in the water, and then catching lizards for a couple of hours until it’s time to progress to the next islet. It’s one of the parts of the field work I enjoy the very most. 

We visited three islets this trip and had pretty good success with the lizards on the first two. Here’re a few photos to illustrate the process:

Here’s an example of an islet we jumped ashore on to survey. It’s about 300 m across. 

And here’s a bit what it looks like on the islands. Many of them have been fairly heavily grazed, you can see the shrubs on this island are low and far between. Lizards loved those rocks though, but they all to often took off running for the nearest bush as we’d approach. 

Here is my friend, Kinsey, demonstrating the proper technique for “noosing” lizards. It requires patience and a steady hand – difficult with the often strong wind – to slip a thin thread slip knot around a lizard. But once you have them in hand the hard work is all worth it! 

I wish I could hear what the lizard is thinking. Some of them have quite a lot of personality! Others just bite me and look grumpy until I let them go. If this lizard had a speech bubble what do you think it’d be saying?