When I went on to water my greenhouses in the afternoon, this little fellow was on the wall just below the handrail.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I suspect she was just as surprised as I was and she did stay still while I was trying to snap a few pictures with my phone without spooking her. After I came back from watering the tomatoes, she was still there, just a few cm further.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
She eyed me suspiciously and after I snapped a few more pictures in a better light, she finally got fed up with the strange giant who kept putting a big black rectangular thing near her and she jumped straight down (about 140 cm) and scuttled near the wall. She kept watching me warily from there and I did not snap more pictures because I did not want to stress her. When I went by again a few minutes later, she was away.
I have always liked lizards, I consider them to be beautiful. It lightens my mood to meet one in my garden, I like to know they are around.
She is beautiful.
never get to see lizards here, just garter snakes, as reptiles go.
Beautiful.
cool, didn’t realize you had lizards in your area.
here in California, I believe the lizards are instrumental in reducing incidents of Lyme disease. It’s been a while since I’ve read up on it, but I believe it was something like there is some component in lizard blood (maybe western fence lizard blood?) that kills off the lyme disease pathogens (bacteria?) present in the tick’s gut when it feeds on a lizard.
Also, it’s just cool to see a lizard sunning, eating bugs, doing pushups, and other lizard things. :)
That’s an impressive specimen!
I like them as well, although they always look at me like I’m doing something wrong by being in “their” territory.
@lochaber, there are only three species of reptile viable in my area. Viviparous lizard Zootoca vivipara shown in the picture. Slowworm Anguis fragilis -- I have seen that one often as a child but only a few times in my garden and I haven’t seen one for decades. And common European viper Vipera berus. I would not mind having those in my garden, they might help with the voles. But I only ever saw those on south-facing slopes and my garden is on a north-facing one, albeit not very steep. I too did not see one for decades but then I only ever saw those when I went out of my way to find them, they are shy animals and quickly hide when humans approach.
All three are considered endangered species within CZ and are protected by law at all stages of their life.
She is lovely and I’m sure she is doing a good job of keeping the greenhouse free of insects. I’m surprised that there are lizards that live so far north.
Minnesota has skinks, but they generally live in the sand plain habitat left by melting glaciers. They are quite shy but I’ve spotted them occasionally when they come out to bask in the sun in the morning.
In Florida, there are small lizards in every bush which scatter if you come close. There are some very large ones too, but they mostly stay in the water.
ok but how the hell do you tell the difference between viviparous and common wall lizards? they both live in czechy and most of the goog image results are identical.
Charly
Never would have thought that we’re that far apart animal wise.we have tons of slowworms here. If I overturn things in the garden they always let me know that they’re not happy with me.
@Tethys, the lizard was not actually inside the greenhouse. The task fo de-bugging the greenhouse probably falls down to a rather huge toad that I encountered there a few times.
@GAS, the common wall lizard lives only in one locality in southern Czechia. So I never needed to learn how to distinguish them. Theoretically the sand lizard Lacerta agilis could live here too but I have never seen it.
I am way too north and too up (over 600 MASL) for most non-viviparous reptiles not being able to survive the winter, although that might be changing these last two decades.
My sister says she has once seen the grass snake Natrix natrix at the reservoir a few km east of the town but I never had the luck.
@Giliell there is most of Germany between us after all :-)