Current location:	Kanha
Entry tags:	kanha, lizard, reptile, sitana

Fan - Throated Lizard!
A small well camouflage lizard ran real fast and became still and immediately disappeared blending into its surrounding. Karthik quickly caught it and started looking at the lizards legs and said ‘ this is …’, me next to him excited and to show even I know few lizards name uttered few names fast before Karthik could, not allowing him to say. He said ‘wait look at these toes they are only four instead of five so this is your Sitana Fan-throated lizard!’ These lizards were common where we are but I had not noticed it before but I knew about this. We were in a small patch of scrub forest outskirts of Bangalore birding, where I saw these lizards for the first time this was around 8 years back.

Since then this lizard fascinated me and i always wanted to photograph it. Now after many years I was lying in an uncomfortable position in leaf litter trying to shoot this lizard display. Males have these beautiful throat fan or dewlap, that is how they get their name, which is used only in breeding season that is now in summer to attract females and size up with rival males.

After many attempts i finally got one decent frame of this lil fella show off. The dewlap/fan also gets beautiful blue colour.





They display with the fan out if there is another male around but here there was a female so this lizards was running closer to her shaking his head up and down and flashing his dewlap very fast

As the female came closer he got excited and started approaching her closer with his head up and female responded with lowering her head to the ground but nothing happening she ran from there followed by the male. Same repeated again at different place but they dint mate.



Actually i like this lizard for another reason, the way they can run! they are also bipedal, when they run they run very fast and with their two hind legs! its so fast one cant easily make out.



In the one the frame which i almost deleted thinking its a blur shot, actually i had just missed a running shot!!!