A lizard time of year

To those of you that follow this I am sorry for taking such a long hiatus.  I am hoping to get back in the swing of things and will plan on posting once a week.  Right now most of the drift fences are pretty quiet--no rain and temps in the 90's--not a great combination for amphibians.  But, this time of year we do get to see a lot of lizards.  We've had more Sceloporus than usual showing up in the pit fall traps, a handful of ground skinks, and plenty of Anolis in the buckets but also scurrying all over the fence.  This Thursday and Friday I actually had the pleasure of going out looking for lizards.  Normally I see a few opportunistically, but rarely do I go looking for them.  But, Bryan Falk, a graduate student at AMNH working with Susan Perkins (who I went to grad school with) was in town looking for Anolis and Sceloporus so I got to help him.  He is studying lizard malaria and was looking for some infected animals.  It was nice change of pace for me.  We didn't get any Sceloporus but got a good number of Anolis and saw plenty of skinks....like the broadhead skink, Eumeces laticeps, in the photo.

Other drift fence highlights this week include three ringneck snakes (as in photo) in one bucket--not surprisingly one female and two males that most likely were following the scent of the female and got stuck in the same bucket.  Also got one copperhead juvenile distinguished by it's yellow tail tip.