Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
A sleeping chuckwalla is happy to be stuck between a rock and a hard place on a warm spring afternoon. It was a beautiful crevice, deep enough to provide protection from the hawks and owls living nearby with hungry mouths to feed. It’s a bit humbling to see for someone who has trouble sleeping even curled up and comfy in bed.
📷: Sony A6700 | Sony 100-400mm | Sony 1.4X
🗓️: May 28, 2024
It took me 5 years to make this picture, not that there is anything complicated in the setup, rather it took me 5 years of hiking in the desert to see my first chuckwalla. Back on a spring Saturday I finally got up for a sunrise hike, mostly motivated by the hope of photographing saguaro buds and flowers. Flush with success I headed home and picked up Bear and brought him back for us to hike together, and thankfully so as it was on this hike I first spotted the chuckwalla.
I came back the next morning for some more saguaro photography but as I passed by where I had seen her the previous day, I stopped because the pattern recognition part of my brain told me something was interesting but couldn’t tell me what or where. I stared for the longest time before finally realizing the thin rock in a crevice between granite boulders was in fact a tail. It’s obvious in the picture since it’s highly zoomed in courtesy of the telephoto lens, and I’m down at a lower level and different angle where the gap is more pronounced. She’s sleeping back in the darkness and protection of the crevice.
As before I went home and brought Bear back and she was more visible though still deep in shadow. I didn’t have the telephoto with me and besides Bear was eager for our time together, and so was I, so I snapped a quick picture and we continued into the desert.
📷: Sony A6600 | Sony 100-400 | Sony 1.4X
Date: May 28, 2023
On a September evening I headed to my favorite trail to take pictures of patterns in two saguaros. I never made it past the first as when I stopped a common side-blotched lizard scampered up into the World’s Best Hiding Spot, protected behind large spines in a gap between two trunks. The little lizards are a favorite so I could hardly believe I’d get to add one to my series of animals on saguaros, and so perfectly posed!
Although I took a quick shot with the telephoto lens I had time to switch to my macro setup and shoot a sequence of images for a focus stack, as I wanted everything in the scene to be sharp. Unfortunately the more excited I am, the less likely I am to setup the camera properly, and the exposure was set for the scenes I originally intended to photograph. With the sun getting low and the hill in shade, each picture took 2 seconds, the sequence 34, and it was only later I realized my mistake. When I finally worked up the courage to look at the pictures weeks later, she had stayed still and all the photos were sharp. Perfectly posed and poised!
No matter how long our sojourn in the desert lasts, this will be a favorite moment.
I’ve been in the mood for environmental portraits so I was delighted to take one of two of my favorite desert inhabitants, the saguaro and the common side-blotched lizard, one of the largest residents and one of the smallest (at least one of the smallest on four legs). As much grief as I give my pattern-matching self for spotting marmots in the rocky hills when he knows there are no marmots here (he’s mostly stopped with the occasional relapse) and for spotting lizards that turn out to be protuberances in the rocks, he nailed this one from afar. The little fellow was a ways off and wasn’t worried about me so I had time to find a spot on the trail both where I could see the saguaro behind him and place him in a gap between the giant arms so he’d be easy to see against the blue sky.
I quietly wondered if he’d be willing to stick around for an hour-and-a-half for the last light of day but I knew he wouldn’t stay that long and neither would I, I wanted to get some hiking in and I had only just begun. In any event I finished the day further east, taking environmental portraits of another favorite resident, but no spoilers …
I was delighted when an antelope squirrel dug a burrow in the front yard, but its time with us was rather short as I’m fairly certain a bobcat got it. A pair of spiny lizards moved in shortly after, although I didn’t see the female for long. A roadrunner made several attempts at this one on different days and I don’t know if it was eventually successful, as while I didn’t see the lizard for a while there is one around occasionally now, so perhaps it moved on to a better location. Hard to say as there are multiple lizards in the area as some came over to sample the flowers on the bush above this rock. The only way I could tell they weren’t all the same lizard is one was regrowing its tail and one had a missing front leg (it looked like it had learned to live without it just fine).
When we moved to Arizona I was delighted to find lizards but also a bit baffled at identifying them. On my first visit to the Granite Mountain area I encountered a handful of little lizards in one rock formation on the Saddlehorn Trail but was particularly confused by one that, to my eye, looked milky white. When I brought the telephoto lens to my eye I understood my confusion, the little thing was molting and from some angles the dead skin looked white in the morning sun. I was even more surprised when it ran over to where I was standing, if only we could communicate so I could have offered to help remove the larger tufts. It must feel good when all the dead skin is gone!
The sun was just tipping over the horizon this fall as I approached the summit of Brown’s Mountain with an expansive view of the mountains circling my desert home. But as the light spilled across the world at large around me it was the world writ small before me upon which I trained my gaze and my camera’s lens, for I shared that lovely sunrise with an ornate tree lizard scampering about the rock face. I love the scenery here but there is no doubt where my heart lies.
I met this lovely little fellow back in June on some of the nice new trails at the Pima Dynamite Trailhead in McDowell Sonoran Preserve. While I can’t quite say I love the summer heat, I love how it warms the pool for an after-hike swim, and more than anything I love how it draws out my friends from their hiding places in the rocks. Until we meet again little ones, stay safe, stay warm.
What’s better than spending sunrise in the desert? Spending sunrise in the desert with a sleepy lizard. Taken in late September, they’re hard to find now that the weather has cooled.
I nicknamed this jumble of rocks The Lizard Rocks when I first saw them, though I saw no lizards there. It just seemed like they should be there, though I was new to Arizona and not really sure where lizards would want to live. They aren’t large rocks and it’s not a large formation, I suppose my initial fascination came from it being a nice place on a favorite trail to stop for a drink as it’s nestled into a kink on the trail with room to step out of the unsighted path of cyclists and horses. It took me a while but I did eventually start seeing them, on this spring morning I saw at least six lizards from three different species. This ornate tree lizard was the first I saw, I took some closeups but also pulled back to give a bit of flavor of the place he calls home.
Boolie 