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Climber
I'm not a rock climber myself, but I enjoy watching both the two-legged and four-legged variety at Oregon’s Smith Rock State Park. I found this male on an old log in the higher elevations at the park. You can find the little guys everywhere from the valley floor to the rocks along the cliff faces to the top of the rock formations. A telephoto lens was helpful, as they didn't like a close approach and they scamper along the rocks a lot more quickly than I do.
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A Rock, Just Not Smith Rock
A male western fence lizard sunbathes on the top of a rock (one of the many, many rocks) at Smith Rock. While both males and females have blue patches in their midsection, the male also has a blue patch under the chin.
In addition to being able to scamper quickly along horizontal and vertical rock formations, fence lizards excel at rapidly rotating around trees and wooden fences. As you can see from this picture, the five toes of every foot have little claws at the end, just the thing for holding onto the far side of a tree when predators or photographers come calling. |
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Not Abandoned
Bandelier National Monument was easily one of our favorite places during our first trip to New Mexico. The informational materials there pointed out that the modern Pueblo peoples don't like the homes of the ancestral Pueblos to be referred to as ruins (and the implication that they are abandoned) as they feel a strong spiritual connection to their ancestors there.
The old cliff and cave dwellings aren't abandoned in more ways than that, as we saw a variety of wildlife even in the main part of the day. Some of the animals were new species to me, like Williamson's sapsucker, canyon wrens, rock squirrels, and a few lizards I wasn't able to identify. And then there were animals I had seen before but was still delighted to see, such as this fence lizard I found sunning itself beside the trail as I made my way back to the Visitor's Center. |