Well, not the brown anoles--these are pretty much everywhere. Nothing weird about little brown lizards darting around everywhere you go.

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We spent some time trying to "find" Fort Myers. Gertrude Stein may have lamented that "there's no there there" about her home town of Oakland, but I've heard it more accurately applied to other places. We tried in vain to find a town center, walkable village, or cohesive sense of Fort Myers that we could understand as New Englanders. One time I set the GPS for Centennial Park, in "downtown" Fort Myers. There were tall buildings and a park, but we didn't stay long. This laughing gull gave us a funny look as we looked across to the hotels of North Fort Myers where spent the night.

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Well, the internet connection was a bit uneven on the trip, so be prepared for the deluge of pictures now that I'm back in Boston, procrastinating away my buffer day!


A female Anolis wattsi, which I'm calling the Antiguan anole but wikipedia is calling "Watt's anole." I believe that juveniles are colored like females and then the males change as they become sexually mature. I saw some small intermediately colored specimens on this trip. The tiny ones are too fast to photograph in most cases.

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Much of December 30th was spent in the car.

( but no more of these pictures are from there )

As seen in my sneak preview post, this is my Dad on the balcony of Casa Cubuy, the lodge we stayed for two nights. This place is way way at the end of a tiny road way up in El Yunque National Rain Forest.

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This morning my father in law and I went for a walk up the hill. I didn't identify the flowering plant breaking through the pavement. Can you?

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Here Alexis has recorded me carefully regarding a Frangipani worm.( Read more... )

Urban species #108: Anole Anolis wattsi

Clinging to trees and walls, skittering into cracks when alarmed, and seemingly always nearby when you are on Antigua, are small lizards. They are recognizable as anoles, a group of closelyrelated reptiles well-represented throughout sub-tropical America, including parts of the United States, as well as the pet trade. We quickly noticed that there were two main kinds around buildings in Antigua. A fairly drab brown one, with one or two lateral stripes, and a colorful one with shades of bluish and orange, with an almost translucent quality to its skin.

To be honest, I wasn't sure whether to log each kind separately on the 365 project, or to write about one and mention the other as a footnote. The research I just performed settled the matter for me: they are one species. The small anole native to Antigua is Anolis wattsi, and males and females of the species look quite different. Both spend their time hunting small insects using the "sit and wait" foraging--apparently the insect density on Antigua is such that more active foraging isn't necessary. The males, typical of anole species, also spend some time fighting over territory, and extending their neck pouches in display.

This anole species has recently been introduced to Trinidad, where it has become a naturalized urban species, but it does not seem to thrive in the agricultural areas separating the urban areas of that island (http://www.ahailey.f9.co.uk/pdf/wh2006.pdf).

Another, much larger, and spotted, anole species also occurs on Antigua: A. leachi.

( Click for exceptionally lovely anole pictures, by cottonmanifesto. )