Micro Lizards

We appear to have had a new hatching of lizards in the bushes by the driveway. For the last couple of weeks when walking by I’ve been seeing just a bit of motion out of the corner of my eye. But while I was waiting for the helicopter to come back up from the baseball fields yesterday, I must have been waiting long enough and motionless enough for not one but two little dudes to come back out for a few rays.

This is the “big” one of the new crop, about a third the size that we normally see here.

He was set to head back into those bushes at the slightest twitch by me. Thankfully, twitching the camera around didn’t count.

He finally figured, “Screw this, if I’m going to wait, I’ll at least wait where it’s sunny!”

This guy is the smallest I’ve ever seen out and about. Do you even see him? I thought it might be a leaf, twig, or some lawn debris.

Nope, he’s an extremely tiny lizard dude. Those bricks are just under four inches wide (I just went out in the dark and measured…) so he’s less than two inches even with that tail. And boy, when he decides to skedaddle, he is GONE. I guess that’s how he gets to grow up to be a bigger lizard.

There’s at least one other, about mid-range in size between these two, who was sunning on top of an box that Amazon had left on the porch yesterday. He was as surprised as I was when I picked up the box without noticing him. Not to worry, he didn’t have to jump – I put the box back down so he could bug out into the bushes.

A quick search found an article that says Western Fence Lizards lay clutches of eight to thirteen eggs in May and June, which typically hatch in August. That sounds like the ticket here! I’m glad we’re doing it correctly, I would hate to be in trouble with the lizard police!