Field Biologist - Tracks and Shadows: Field Biology as Art - page 37

Henry Fitch inspecting green iguanas for sale as food in an El Salvador market, 1979. (Photo: D.
M. Hillis)
Henry was a frugal creature of habit in the tropics, as he'd been at home—his natural
history was low tech, low cost, but high quality, and in a likely unprecedented gesture he
even returned some grant money after completing a Caribbean project. Hillis calls the
semester he skipped for their trip through Mexico and Central America the most edu-
cational of his undergraduate career; he was repeatedly impressed by the older man's
field stamina, knowledge of local flora and fauna, and equanimity under duress. Dur-
ing four months of living out of a pickup together, David saw Henry get mad only once,
when a border guard deliberately overcharged them. Henderson traveled for six weeks
with his advisor in Mexico, eating cereal with powdered milk every morning and spam
with boiled potatoes every night. Once when they were out of milk and Bob suggested
sandwiches, Henry replied incredulously, “For breakfast? ” and opted for water on his
cereal.
As Henry moved through middle age his publications were increasingly influential.
Jay Savage's Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica judged him “the most important
contributor . . . during the 1970s” to that country's herpetology, one whose publications
“form the starting point for subsequent research on lizard ecology.” 17 In the 1980s,
with Ph.D. student Fabián Jaksic, I combined his San Joaquin Experimental Range find-