Categories
Astrophotography Herps

A Lifer Herp and a Mystery

The action around here is hard to keep up with. Last night I took a night walk on Child’s Mountain looking for snakes and whatever else might turn up. I got one Western Lyresnake and saw several Poorwills. This morning, I headed for Lake Ajo to check out the birds. I got a Willet and a Snowy Plover, both very good birds for this area. To top it all off, when I got back to the camper, I became aware of something on my shoulder, when I reached for it, whatever it was leaped off onto the floor. It was a small lizard, and I started to get suspicious. I herded it toward the door, and it climbed up on the screen. My camera with macro lens was in the truck, so I carefully snuck by the lizard, got the camera and took some photos. Proof of what it was, a Long-tailed Brush Lizard. I’ve been looking for one of these for a long time. I thought I had one once in Alamo Canyon years ago but was never quite sure about that one. This one is a positive ID. So, where did it come from? I could have picked it up this morning while birding around Lake Ajo, but it would have to been on my back while I went to the grocery store, got water and drove back. It could have already been in the truck from some previous day, and it just decided to climb onto me. Or had it somehow got into the camper and climbed onto me? I guess I will never know.

Long-tailed Brush Lizard. A lifer for me! Note the very long tail, some of which is out of the frame.
These lizards are very similar to the Ornate Tree Lizard, but the wide row of enlarged, keeled scales down the back is diagnostic of Long-tailed Brush Lizard.
Western Lyresnake from last night. I have much better photos of this species so didn’t bother trying to get more than this.
This is the globular star cluster M3. One of the finest star clusters in the northern skies, it can be seen using binoculars in Canes Venatici. This the right time of year to be looking for globs, there are several (M3, M5, M13) that are easily seen with binoculars if one knows where to look. M3 contains over 500,000 stars, estimated to be 11 billion years old, about 32,600 light years out there.
M98 or NGC 4192, is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 44.4 million light-years away in Coma Berenices, about 6° to the east of the bright star Denebola. It is dim and not very remarkable to look at, but there are interesting facts about it. It is one of the few galaxies with a blueshift, meaning it is moving toward our galaxy instead of away from it. Out of the billions of galaxies known about 100 are blueshifted.

4 replies on “A Lifer Herp and a Mystery”

Can’t get luckier than having your target species land on your shoulder! Great images

It’s funny how the lizard ‘dropped in’ on you.
That Lyresnake is very pretty.
So, in a few billion years M98 will smash into the Milky Way?

I don’t know that M98 will encounter the Milky Way Galaxy, but the Andromeda Galaxy is predicted to do that in 4 or 5 billion years (and it is only 2.5 million light years away).

Comments are closed.