You may remember I posted an article last Autumn entitled ‘How To Catch A Lizard‘, where I presented to you our arsenal of lizard catching techniques we were to employ on the 2013 Oman expedition.

Luckily, we had some success, but my opinion on the best lizard catching technique has changed.

As far as I know, there is still no single proven technique with a consistently high hit-rate but a mixture of everything did the job for us.

A pair of hands goes hand-in-hand with a net | A noose goes hand-in-hand with a net | And a pair of hands goes hand-in-hand with another couple of pairs of hands, and a net, and a noose and a shemagh and a pillow case.

The results when using these haphazard methodologies, built around teamwork and hands, have been extraordinary.

We captured and collected morphological data on 68 individual reptiles, belonging to 12 species. The star of which was Platyceps Thomasi (Thomas’s Racer), a stunning orange and black banded racer snake, rarely seen and threatened by habitat loss and direct killing.

We recorded twenty-one Pristurus rupestris (Semaphore Rock Geckos) – so called due to the signalling behaviour of the territorial males. This genus is also currently undergoing molecular studies and it is likely we discovered new subspecies hiding away in the wadi rockscapes.

Recording four gecko species belonging to the Hemidactylus (leaf-toed) genus was also a fantastic accomplishment the highlight being the collection of H. lemurinus (Oman Ghost Leaf-toed Gecko) endemic to the Southern Dhofar and Yemen mountain range.