Nature review - Green Crested Lizard

What's that on the grass?

One cold December morning [last 2012—GTG], as I was walking in a campsite somewhere in Amadeo, Cavite, I happened upon a bright green lizard that seemed to gleam on the grass. Its body was about the length of my hand and it had a very long tail. Overcome by curiosity, I tried following the creature because I wanted to take some pictures. It was very fast moving, but I observed that it is also able to hold very still—perhaps using its color to camouflage itself on the grass. While it was motionless, I was able to move in and snap a few photos.

It's a chameleon! Or so we thought....

A few guys nearby were able to catch the lizard and put it in a clear plastic jar. To our surprise, the lizard changed from bright green into a darker green with brown stripes. Oh my, I thought. We caught a chameleon! I took more pictures of the lizard. When I left it with the guys, it had turned into brown.

I was a bit concerned that we could get into trouble by catching an endangered animal. I recall that recently there was a craze in catching geckoes—a specimen weighing 500 grams can fetch up to PHP 100,000 in the black market. So I did a little googling around and found out that there are no chameleons in the Philippines. The “chameleon” we caught is actually a common creature in Southeast Asia called the green crested lizard, Bronchocela cristatella.

According to EcologyAsia.com, the green crested lizard “Lizard inhabits primary and secondary forest, but can also be found in disturbed areas and parklands…. This lizard is known to occur in Burma, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines (the southern islands including Mindanao and Palawan), Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and other parts of Eastern Indonesia, and Java….” Its page on the lizard contains several pictures of this beautiful creature.

Meanwhile, blogger Mark Jason Villa, in his blog Mark Jason Goes Birding, said that he also encountered this Palawan. It was from this blog that I learned that this lizard is in fact a lizard and not a chameleon. His page on the subject contains pictures of the lizard changing from green to brown to green again.

I hope that more people would get the opportunity to see this amazing little creature and be filled with awe and appreciation, and be moved to protect this and all other creatures, so that our children will inherit a world of wonder and natural beauty.