Lights camera...action! update #2

 

ready for action! The lizard might be using it's tail to stabilize take off and transition into glide phase

Hello again from Agumbe Rainforest Research Station! It’s Steve, the Field Assistant, checking in for another update on how it’s all going here.

We’re two weeks in now, and while the challenges of field work remain ever-present, we’re happy with our progress. We’ve settled into a daily routine, and have been rewarded with some amazing footage from these absolutely incredible animals.

We have changed our method of catching Dracos, and the new approach has been working really well. We now catch them at night, while they sleep, and it’s much easier and safer for both the lizards and ourselves. Late in the afternoon, from around 4:30 pm to 5:30/6 pm, we do our daily survey of the plantation to spot lizards. As always, we make note of the time and location of every individual we find. By doing our survey later in the day, as the Dracos are winding down and getting ready to rest, it is much easier for us to return a few hours later as the night has settled in, place the ladder against the tree and gently grab them as they sleep. We immediately place them in a tank, which is filled with large vertical sticks to imitate their natural habitat, and they quickly go back to sleep. By catching them in this way it reduces chances of injury that might occur trying to catch them while they’re active, or injury to ourselves by running through the plantation (there are trenches between the rows of trees), looking upward to follow them as they avoid us. Another good thing about catching them at night is that we do not disturb any feeding or mating behaviour – only a brief part of their night’s sleep. The only tricky part of catching them at night is finding them within reach of our ladder. They seem to like to sleep quite high on their chosen tree, and are often spotted out of our reach. But thankfully we usually find at least two or three within range each night, making catching Dracos a much more simple task. We monitor them closely when they’re in our captivity, always making sure they are safe and healthy.

 

Dracos lay flat with their body against the tree to increase contact surface area to hold on to the tree.

We start our day at 8 am by assembling the cameras, tripods, walkie-talkies and gathering everything else we need and taking it to the flight arena for set-up. Setting up takes between half an hour to an hour, depending on whether we decide to make any changes to our filming arrangements or not. Once everything is ready to go, we have a quick breakfast and we’re set to record some gliding action.

We place the lizards we caught in the night on the launch tree, and sit back and wait for them to warm up and become active. This usually doesn’t take long at all – around 15 minutes or so on average. Timing the filming is still a very tricky process, as the problem of the cameras overheating remains present. It’s a combination of the intense sun, and the cameras heating internally due to the high-quality recording settings we have them set on. When we hit record, we generally only have between five to eight minutes of straight recording to capture a glide before the cameras overheat and need to be switched off to cool down. It’s very tough to try and predict when the lizards will glide. We have to monitor their movements on the tree very closely and guess when they will make the leap. Quite often we will miss a glide, due to the lizard being inactive and suddenly taking the plunge to the target tree without notice. It definitely tests our patience some days, but then we have other days when we’re able to successfully predict and capture multiple glides. It changes every day, and we constantly need to adapt and refine our approach.

Filming in the flight arena generally runs between around 9:30/10 am to 1 or 2 pm. After around 2:30 pm, we cannot continue to film, because as the sun starts to set behind our white cloth background it overexposes our camera shots and essentially renders them useless. We pack up the flight arena, return the cameras and equipment, and head into the office. We download and review our footage, write our field notes, update our data spreadsheets and review our strategy, making changes and tweaks to anything that could be done better. The plantation survey takes place late in the afternoon, and Draco catching is every night.

Interesting Observations...

 

The alpha male is extremely territorial and flares it's wings proclaiming his territory and scaring other males away!

An Alpha male Draco or the dominant male has not been helping our cause lately. His territory is the area surrounding the flight arena, and for the past four or five days he has been arriving to interrupt our filming. He’s a large Draco, and while we wait for a glide, he swoops in and lands on one of the trees on the perimeter of the flight arena. If we have a male in the arena for filming, which we usually do, he begins dewlapping (extending the flap underneath his neck) and expanding his patagium (wing membrane) in a threat display to scare off the rival male intruding on his turf. As a result, we have had many occasions of the male on the launch tree gliding in the opposite direction of the target tree; to get away from the Alpha. If only the Alpha approached from the other direction, he could actually help us by encouraging our males to glide toward the target tree, but unfortunately he always approaches from the direction of the target tree. After attempting to catch him for days on end (he is a tough one, as he sits particularly high on trees), we finally successfully caught him yesterday afternoon as we packed up the arena. We spotted him sitting low on a tree, used our pole to spook him into gliding to a nearby tree, and we finally caught the elusive Alpha. Observing him from afar we had noticed that he sits differently to other Dracos; leaning right back, as if he doesn’t grip the tree with his front legs. Upon catching him, we finally got a good look at him and discovered that he only has a single toe on his front left leg – an example of how tough these lizards are, and that they can not only survive, but thrive, with multiple toes missing. We named him ‘Hook’ due to his odd foot, and decided to return to filming after catching him. In a short time, he kindly delivered two perfect glides through the arena for us. Thanks, Hook!

 

Alpha male a.k.a Captain Hook! Even with just one toe remaining on his left forelimb, this draco is able to show his dominance over other males in his territory!

Today we have taken our first break from filming since setting up the flight arena to conduct some maintenance work on the arena, re-assess our approach, and give Pranav a chance to take a thorough look at a recent glide through the 3D tracking software to ensure we are approaching filming in the correct way. To date, we have successfully filmed a total of 11 glides through the flight arena with all seven cameras recording. Tomorrow we will be back to filming as usual and continue to capture these magnificent reptiles in flight. Stay tuned for the next update, coming soon!