Our guide moved this Brown Leaf Chameleon to a safer spot away from the path

I've written a separate blog about the night walks I was able to do in Madagascar but I thought I'd briefly mention them here. Walking through national parks at night is prohibited by law in Madagascar, so we walked along the roadside looking for whatever we could find. It might sound surprising but we came across a lot more than we expected.

Night walks in Ranomafana would start at sunset so the in the first hour there was usually enough natural light to work with photographically.

On every night walk the first animal we came across, usually heard before being seen, was the Madagascar Tree Frog. They made a 'quacking' sound not too dissimilar to a duck, hence we nicknamed them 'quacking frogs'. They were found right by the road side amongst branches and plant matter saturated in water running down from the trees above.

Higher up in the trees, around head height, we usually found Nose Horned Chameleons as well. They were abundant here. Aside from the pygmy chameleon family group (brookesia - like the Brown Leaf Chameleon above) the Nose Horned Chameleon is the smallest chameleon species, again endemic to Madagascar. Somehow they managed to cling on to tiny branches as the wind picked up during sunset.