Lizard SP

After yesterday's shameful performance and I am talking about my attitude, I had a good think about things and went out on today's safari on a mission, with a modified attitude. I realized a few things, firstly I remembered that I was plagued with a speck of grit under my eye lid which had now thankfully cleared. After the previous day's mega opportunity of the green lizard, the following session is always going to be a let down. I also realized that I had turned down a lot of blip opportunities, too lazy to get down and dirty. I put all this right today, determined to record everything that moved, my primary target being a red damsel.

I captured mosquitoes, butterflies, dragons, damsels, hoppers, moths, wasps, caterpillars and more dragons. A couple of notable missed opportunities were a HUGE wasp, so large that as it flew past my head, it did not make a sound. Once flying insects reach a certain wing span, the wing speed slows to such an extent that it is below the human audible range. I would guess at least one and a half inches long and maybe closer to two. Unfortunately it did not settle.

The second missed opportunity was a mammal which ran down a tree trunk. Squirrel like but about twice the size and with a pointed snout. I hung around for several minutes but it did not re-appear unfortunately. I will be watching out for that one in future. All in all a very successful safari, but it was not over yet. It seemed that the blip monster had noted my modified attitude and decided to reward me with one more blip opportunity.

As I arrived back at the house on my motorbike, a large lizard scampered in front of me and stopped in front of my house. This thing was about 18 inches long with its lengthy, whippy tail. I parked the bike down a bit and started shooting. I have seen this type of lizard before, previous to joining blip, in fact I am pretty sure it was living under my bed!

I knew that with stealth, it was going to be approachable, like the lizard from two days ago, it has ultimate confidence in it's camouflage, in fact this lizard can and does, change color according to its surroundings, so the folio image differences are not me messing around with settings, the lizard changed from light green through to black when it got distressed. At that point, I called it a day and let it go.

Notice the lizards lengthy rear legs (folio). Once this lizard decides to run, it is lightning fast and runs on its rear legs, rotating them like two large wheels, quite comical to see. I surprised one in my workshop once, it was on the top shelf and ran the 16 feet length in about two seconds. I spent the next twenty minutes picking up everything that had been sent flying by the scaly intruder!

The lizard also has a crest on its back and under its chin which it flares when threatened. On one of the folio shots he does slightly flare the crests, as he was not too sure of my intentions. Incidentally, I had to use fill in flash, as the lighting was all wrong, can't have everything, right!

Once again I was faced with a difficult choice of blip, sometimes one blip is just not enough to tell the whole story. I was going to go with a cropped eye shot, which showed a clear SP of me lying on the floor with my chin in the dirt, but decided to go for the only slightly cropped shot and put the SP in folio with all the rest of the shots.

I changed my mind about changing the lizard blip from two days ago. I decided that the whole essence of the blip was the story and the original blipped image was the story, sorry to mess you about. Also, I think my blips are a bit documentary and this wasp shot with the blurred lizard was pleasantly alternative. I do need to be more imaginative with my insect shots.

I hope you enjoy the blip monsters offering as much as I did. Sorry to inflict another folio of lizard shots on you once again! I did actually get the red damsel, final shot in folio.

Dave