A Green Water Dragon?

How could this be? Was I delusional? We were treading a narrow trail through old secondary rainforest in Amazonian Peru, not in southeast Asia, the bailiwick of the green water dragon.

We were out late. It was after midnight. And there, sleeping soundly on a supple limb at face height, was a foot long green lizard that looked an awful lot like the dragon with which I was so familiar. Big angular head, somewhat stocky body and tapering tail. Vertebral crest, sturdy legs.

As I photographed the sleeping lizard I was doing an extensive memory search and finally, as a default, came up with the hoplocercine genus Enyalioides, the forest dragons. And following through on the thought process led me eventually to the Amazon Forest Dragon, E. laticeps.

This was exciting, for I had never seen one in the wild. I could now count this as a lifer on my ever growing life-list.

More photos under the jump...

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.