The first week’s data from the Salina Reserve Blues survey is in the bag now, and week two began today.  We already have 35 individual iguanas recorded from our survey routes, including two wild hatchlings from the 2009 breeding season. Week one highlights included an encounter with an enormous Cayman “racer” (Alsophis cantherigerus) with a sinister bulge in its belly. We scanned for a PIT tag fearing one of the released Blue Iguanas had met its nemesis, but were happy to be able to rule that out.

Crystal with BYB ready for weighing and measuring

Then Matt was surprised by an iguana much bigger than any of the iguanas we had been monitoring so far. We trapped him next day, and found out it was “BYB” who had lost his Blue-Yellow-Blue bead tag. One of the original 2004 released males, BYB has grown far outgrown all the others we are still seeing, weighing in at 3.41 Kilograms.  The Salina Blues are growing up!