I am the Lizard Whisperer

Another Great Basin Whiptail made an appearance today, this time in my front yard. These guys are extremely skittish (and fast!), so I had to go very slowly. Still, he let me get in pretty close! As a reminder, clicking on any photo will bring up a larger version. You may want to do that with this series.

He skittered under a shrub, so I slowly made my way around.

He kept an eye on me as I moved in . . .

Here’s a shot of him blinking his eye. Their eyelids are transparent and close from bottom to top. I highly recommend clicking on the photo to get a closer look. Better yet, click over to my Desert Creatures SmugMug gallery to see the original in all it’s reptilian glory.

Here’s a view of his full length. As I mentioned yesterday, their tails can be as long as 2/3 of their entire length. His tail is nearly complete, but it appears there is some new growth at the end. For scale, the leaf right behind his tail is nearly one inch long. This guy was about 7 inches or so. Other scale info: the rabbit pellet just to the right of his forearm is about a quarter of an inch or so across.

One last close-up.

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Day 182 – Great Basin Whiptail

I spied this creature out in the undeveloped portion of our 5 acre lot. He was about six inches long, though he should have been longer. You can see that his tail is growing back, so it isn’t as long as it can be (up to two body lengths, according to this site).

Day 168 – Desert Lizards

I am a day behind on posting (and there’s a story behind that) but I guarantee that these were all taken yesterday! As you know, I live in rural Nevada. And most of Nevada is desert. In northern Nevada we are considered “high desert” which means very little water, a very short growing season, and very little green. I have very few opportunities to photograph lush landscapes and overgrown properties, but what I can photograph are the creatures that live here.

I took a lot of photos for this series and will not post them all, so if you’d like to see the rest of them, please check them out at my SmugMug gallery, Desert Creatures.

What we have a lot of in our neck of the woods are yellow-backed spiny lizards. Yesterday I stepped outside to turn the drip system on our front foliage and caught this little one sipping water at a tiny stream leaking from the tubing. This one is a female, and appears to be quite young. She was quite small, maybe three inches from the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail. (click on images for larger version)

She was as curious about me as I was about her

She wasn’t the least bit shy and I moved slowly enough that she allowed me to move in closer and closer to her. The detail of her face and body are remarkable.

I moved in closer . . .

And closer . . .

After shooting some more (check out the gallery for the rest), I walked around the house to the drive-way area and came upon this guy, a fully mature male who was sunning himself near our parked cars. He was quite larger than the young female above. These lizards can grow to 5 1/2 inches long from the their nose to the base of their tails. Add in the tail and they can get pretty long! This guy was huge. I can tell he is a boy from the blue under his jaw. Though I could not see his belly, I am sure it was blue as well.

Like his younger counterpart, he wasn’t particularly skittish. The creatures that live on our property are pretty much used to our comings and goings and as long as we don’t move too fast, everything is fine. So I moved in closer.

Perspective on size: the twig his forearm is on was just under half and inch in diameter. The rabbit pellet by his rear leg is about a quarter of an inch.

Don’t forget to check out the gallery!