Far From the Madding Crowd: Fossils and Lizards

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

Fossils and Lizards

Fossils and lizards seem to go together. We had a great day out today, beautiful sunshine and no wind. We drove to Worth Matravers in the Purbecks and then walked from there to Hedbury Quarry. Our main reason for going to this quarry was to see the Wall lizards and we were not disappointed, they were everywhere in this quarry, I had a brilliant time photographing these little lizards. We appear to have four species of lizards in the UK:

Common lizard
Sand lizard
Wall lizard
Western Green lizard (a new lizard found on the cliff tops of Boscombe and Southbourne)

Most people know about the Common lizard, some may know about the Sand lizard, but I wonder how many people know about the Wall lizard (I certainly did not know about them until very recently) The Western Green lizard is a recent discovery, so I expect vertually no one has heard of these. I have found a useful website about British reptiles:

http://www.surrey-arg.org.uk/SARG/08000-TheAnimals/SARG2Reptiles.shtml

Wall lizard, I am not sure about who is male and who is female. The only difference seems to be is that the males are slightly larger than the females.

This one was watching me while I was watching him

This lizard came towards me, maybe he thought he could shoo me off :)

Difficult to say if these are two males

This was a surprise, a Common lizard, in the same location

Ammonites

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Really good images Lyn, I'll bet he was watching you.; 21 April 2010 at 11:15
holdingmoments said...: Excellent shots Linda. I've never seen these before; little beauties.; 21 April 2010 at 18:33
Linda Yarrow said...: Thanks Roy, it was great watching him and I was close enough to him to be able to see that he was giving me the eye:)

Thanks Keith, it was incredibly easy to get these pictures. The male Wall lizards are territorial and it was not difficult to find them, just go to each pile of rocks and stones and you will find a lizard. I think people do get these confused with the Sand lizard.; 21 April 2010 at 23:15

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My Blog

I have taken the title of my blog from Thomas Hardy's fourth novel 'Far From the Madding Crowd' which he wrote in 1874. He took his title from Thomas Gray's poem 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' completed in 1750. Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset where he lived for most of his life and where he based the stories in his novels. The word 'madding' means frenzied and there is a sense of freedom I get being out in the countryside and being close to nature away from the frenzied atmosphere of the towns and cities. I live in Dorset and like Thomas Hardy, it is where I have lived for most of my life, my blog is mostly about nature in Dorset. I am a member of the Dorset Wildlife Trust. I will include my garden and anything of interest about the natural world in Britain.