| Lizards
of the Valley of Fire |
| OK,
let's start by cheating. The lizard you see here wasn't
in Nevada's Valley of Fire when I photographed it, instead it was standing
in the middle of the west-bound lane of route 62 in California, which is
just outside the northern boundary of Joshua Tree national park.
In my defence, though, let me say that I was on my way to the Valley
of Fire when I took this photo. I'd already passed another
lizard standing in the road when I saw this one. I drove past
it at 60 miles an hour but then I thought, "no, darn it, I'm going to get
a photo!". So I turned around, drove back to the lizard and
parked by the side of the road. The lizard was still in the
same spot, so I hauled out my long lens and started very slowing getting
closer, taking photos as I went. Turns out that this is a very
clever little beast; lots of animals learn that cars and trucks always
stay on the road and you're safe as long as you're not on the road - but
this lizard seems to have figured out that cars and trucks always stay
on one side of the road, and you're safe as long as you're on the other
side! As I took photos, 4 or 5 vehicles passed by, all heading
east thankfully, and the lizard didn't move at all, even when a large bus
blasted past at speed. Finally, when I'd approached just a
little too close for comfort, she took off at great speed, which is probably
also a great skill to have when you spend lots of your time in the middle
of the road. |
 |
| Ah, and how did
I know that this is a she? It's because this is the coloring
typical of a female long-nosed leopard lizard when it's carrying eggs.
You can see the spots that earn the leopard lizard its name, but it's those
brilliant vermillion strokes that really make this critter stand out, and
make me very glad that I decided to head back for a photo.
As you can see, the entire underside of the tail is painted in this color.
The spots are said to darken when the lizard gets cooler, but what's more
extraordinary is that leopard lizards sometimes squeal when threatened
or captured, which is very unusual behavior for a reptile. |
 |
 |
The main reason
I was making the six hour drive on Memorial weekend from Palm Springs in
southern California up to the Valley of Fire in Nevada, about 50 miles
north-east of Las Vegas, was that I'd lost some of the photos I'd taken
up there during the previous Easter weekend.
Along with some photos
of the Las Vegas Strip, I lost all of the photos I'd taken of the Hoover
dam and other photos from within the Valley of Fire, in particular some
shots of a chuckwalla lizard which I'd taken near my campsite.
I had other photos from Vegas, and I can live without photos of Hoover
dam, but I was very sorry to lose those chuckwalla shots. Although
I had hoped to get Vegas and Nevada out of my system on my previous trip,
I realized that I wasn't going to be satisfied until I got what I wanted.
Thankfully, I didn't
have to wait long before replacing the chuckwalla photos. Not
only did I track down the solitary individual I'd photographed before,
I started to see chuckwallas all over the place. Here, for
instance, is one very near the balanced rock beside the visitor's center.
|
| This individual
was near the Rainbow Vista, and put on quite a show. Starting
with the vigorous shaking up and down of the head which is a feature of
many lizard threat displays, this lizard actually moved much closer towards
me. I was then able to slowly work my way even further forward
and get some shots from about 20 feet away. |
 |
| Moving even more
slowly, I went behind the chuckwalla to a position about 6 feet away, very
slowly unfolded and positioned my tripod, mounted the camera on it and
started taking some more shots.
Using a tripod in
this way makes it possible to preserve natural lighting while using a small
enough aperture to get most of the lizard in focus.
As you can see, they're
a pretty good sized lizard, up to a foot and a half (45 centimeters).
Despite the vicious looking claws, they're herbivores. Younger
ones have a more prominently barred tail, adults can sometimes have a very
reddish back.
The chuckwalla's
party trick is to run into crevices when feeling threatened, and then gulp
enough air to wedge itself into the crevice so it can't be pulled out.
As you might imagine, with a trick like this they don't get invited to
many parties. |
 |
| The
increase in numbers of chuckwallas was mirrored by an increase in the number
of other lizard species I saw. At Easter I'd only seen two
types of lizards, but this time I came away with seven or eight, probably
because of increasing temperatures. And I didn't have to look
far to find some of them, either; this one, which I believe is some sort
of whiptail, was nosing around right by my tent. It had just
finished chasing off another one of the same species and then came crawling
back towards me. |
 |
| Like the whiptail,
I feel I ought to be able to figure out what species of lizard this is,
but I haven't been able to. I'd say it was a side-blotched
lizard, certainly the pattern and color of the spots seems right, but side-blotched
lizards are supposed to have a prominent dark blotch just behind their
front legs. There does seem to be a slight dark spot in that
area on this one, but it's certainly not very prominent. |
 |
| Another mystery
lizard. This one was sharing a large hole at the back of a
small cave with some spiders, probably black widows. |
 |
 |
Another one I'm
very uncertain about. With the coloring on its side and tail,
and that prominent line of scales running straight down its back, I'm hazarding
a guess that this is a very young desert iguana. It doesn't
look too similar at first glance to one
of the older desert iguanas that I've seen, but the line of scales
is supposed to be a strong distinguishing feature, so I'll go with it. |
| This photo of a
desert banded gecko is an interesting one, for several reasons.
I took this shot
at night, during a three hour walkaround amongst the very large rocks surrounding
my campsite. I was hoping to see some snakes, scorpions and
tarantulas, but in the end all I came away with was a small praying mantis
and this gecko. Or maybe I should say a mantis, this gecko
and the grasshopper it's just eaten!
They say that this
type of gecko waves its tail above its head like a cat when stalking prey.
If attacked, the tail breaks off at the point where you can see it changes
from wide to less wide, and the stripes change from longitudinal to latitudinal.
It seems amazing
that such a delicate creature could survive in such a hot and dry place,
but it manages by coming out in the cool of the night and spending the
days deep within crevices and holes. |
 |
| I
was feeling pretty good about the different lizards I'd seen, but little
did I suspect that I was about to see the most interesting one of all,
a desert horned lizard. They're usually less than six inches
(15 centimeters) long, but their appearance entirely makes up for their
relatively small size. It was definitely the highlight of my
time in the park. |
 |
| You've probably
already noticed from other photos on this page that many of the rocks in
the Valley of Fire are red. Lizards like this one adapt themselves
to the conditions by becoming rather reddish themselves, as this one shows.
These horned lizards have other tricks up their horny sleeves - they can
squirt blood up to a distance of about four feet from glands on their lower
eyelids! For some reason this is extremely distasteful to canines
such as coyotes and foxes. Horned lizards subsist almost entirely
on ants, though this individual took time out from his photo session with
me to eat some small gnat or something which happened to pass by.
After eating the gnat, the lizard adopted the slightly odd looking position
you see here, which looks rather like a dog lying down. Although
they're often sold in stores, they make lousy pets, largely because it's
very difficult to keep them supplied with enough ants to keep them alive. |
 |
| You can see from
the shape of its body why many people used to call these guys "horned toads",
though of course they're not related to toads at all. Nevertheless,
the flat body and those amphibian looking rear feet do give it that appearance.
The flattened body
also helps to make this type of lizard difficult to eat, because you'd
need a pretty wide throat to swallow it.
This was the third
of these lizards that I saw in the park, and was jumpier than the first
two - but the fourth one was even jumpier and I only got one photo of it.
After first running away, this one at least let me get my tripod set up
so I could take a few photos in natural light. It's rather
a peculiar lighting, since this was in a small gully surrounded on three
sides by large red rocks reflecting the late afternoon sunlight, which
gives an unusual pinkish tone to the shot. |
 |
Don't
forget to check out the
main Valley of Fire page or the
Reptiles of California's Coachella Valley!
|
