Today's #LizardReport is a little different because I am on a road trip. Camped out at Kelso Dunes and spent the morning herping in Mojave National Preserve.
7 species of lizard, 4 of them "life lizards"! Here's the first, Phrynosoma platyrhinos, a horned lizard. Look at that camo! They're sooo cute!
(It's intermission at a live theater performance, so I'll post more later or tomorrow in this thread.)
Another "life lizard" from my day #herping near Kelso Dunes, Mojave National Preserve. Long nosed leopard lizard. It sat there letting me photograph it for a while, then got bored and disappeared into a hole.
I also saw a tiger whiptail, zebra tailed lizard and lots of desert iguanas. I don't feel bad about not getting good photos of any of these, because there are tame individuals of these species in my yard in Arizona 😆
Edit: looks like the whiptail is a Great Basin whiptail, Aspidoscelis tigris tigris according to CaliforniaHerps.com, as opposed to what Tucson Herpetological Society calls tiger whiptail, Aspidoscelis tigris. 🤔
This is the first time I've ever seen zebra-tails or desert iguanas outside of town, where I guess they must be a little more used to people. These ones would bolt full sprint 50 to 100 feet away from me. The ones in town are highly skittish, but you can generally get a little bit closer to them.
If you want to see pictures of these species, just look back at the hashtags in my profile.
Based on californiaherps.com, I believe this is the Western side-blotched lizard, Uta stansburiana elegans.
Saw several of these in the rocks where I found the chuckwalla, Mojave National Preserve.
While I have seen side-blotched lizards before in the lower Sonoran desert, I think they may be a different sub species than this one from the Mojave desert.
The nice thing about being a beginner herper is that virtually anywhere I go, I can find lizards I've either never seen before or that I hadn't previously put in the effort to ID.
This was the big exciting find from my day #herping in Mojave National Preserve, my first chuckwalla! Wow they do live in the desert areas I'm used to hiking in, I've never actually seen one. After finding six other species of lizards in the same morning, I decided this would be my day to find a chuckwalla.
As I was driving through the Preserve, I spotted a low, basalt escarpment above a dry wash. Everything I'd read suggested that was perfect chuckwalla habitat.
I walked a quarter mile across the desert and then down to one end of the escarpment then all the way back up to the other and then on the way back down, I saw it! This handsome critter was surveying its domain from its perch about 15 feet up the cliff. Conveniently, it posed for a while before dipping out of sight.
A few minutes later, I saw a smaller chuckwalla, about a foot long. I was still 40 feet away from it when it ran in quick bursts up the side of the cliff and then disappeared.
Finding these two lizards, and especially getting such a nice photo of the big one, completely made my day. They are not particularly rare or anything, but in all my time in the desert I had never found one. So to specifically go looking for them and make a correct guess as to their habitat and then to find two was extremely gratifying.
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Cat West