Desert Darters
- Caleb Venturo
- 7 days ago
- 1 min read
“There he goes!”
“After him!”
“I’ve got him—no I haven’t!”
“There he is—under that rock!”
From the large, colorful Collared Lizards of Oklahoma to the small, spiny lizards and fence lizards of the Southwestern deserts, there is always a lizard to chase, and we must always at least try to catch it. This time, the lizard was a Western Side-Blotched Lizard at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona.
This lizard is a small, brown one with a dark blotch behind its foreleg. Most people would not even notice it. But we are eager to find, photograph, and, if possible, catch each new animal—from tiny tiger beetles to massive moose. Then, once we see them, we can learn as much as possible about them.
Western Side-Blotched Lizards live from central Washington south to Texas and west to the Pacific Coast. They prefer dry, gravelly areas with smaller shrubs, where they feed on insects. Like most lizards, the Side-Blotched is diurnal.
Don’t forget to look for the small gifts God has given you wherever you live—grackles eating crumbs on a busy sidewalk, an anole climbing up a wall, sparrows cheeping in the bushes, a bee greedily sucking nectar in a flower. These small, daily gifts—the ones that not many people even notice—are sometimes the best of all.
Photos by Joshua Venturo
Information from: Behler, John L., and F. Wayne King. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1979.
