A Quick Trip To The Desert

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prowling further amongst the boulder piles I spotted several more Rock Lizards, all of them sunning in the lee side of boulders, out  of the wind.  They would move away quickly, but I noticed they never ran very far, either to some protective crevice, or far enough around a boulder to disappear from sight.  In profile, the head and body of these lizards appear very flat, which I suppose allows them to take advantage of smaller cracks and crevices.  Petrosaurus is a  true saxicolous, or rock-dwelling, lizard.  It lives in no other habitat other than the rock pile.

Somehow a couple of hours had passed, and I was very thirsty - the steady desert wind sucks the moisture right out of your body, it seems.  The human form is not designed to retain water as well as Petrosaurus or some other lizard can.  Having covered only a small section of the hillside, I headed back to my car for some water.

The afternoon was getting on, prompting me to move on.  I wanted to check out a spot on the map called Fossil Canyon - how could I resist a name like that?  I continued east, still shedding altitude, until I reached Ocotillo, a wide spot on the road down on the desert floor.  I stopped for gas and more water, and then headed north for a few miles, turning off on the gravel road leading to Fossil Canyon.  I ran out of road just short of a large upthrust cut by a narrow gap - Fossil Canyon, I guessed.  The towering layers of pinkish rock were capped off with a thick brown sedimentary layer.  As I walked along, small lizards skittered from rock to rock.  I tried in vain  to capture one, or at least get close enough for a positive identification or to take a picture.  They were sceloporids at least; I suspected they were Yellow Backed Desert Spiny Lizards, Sceloporus magister uniformis, a species of the desert floor that hide and live amongst rock and brush.    I kicked up a few more as I wandered up the canyon floor.  Something different ran under a creosote bush, a bit larger in size.  I ran it out of the bush - it was a Whiptail, with very faint broken stripes on its back, probably a Great Basin Whiptail, Cnemidophorus tigris tigris.  I couldn't get close to this lizard either - it just wasn't my day!  If I had someone with me, I might have been able to corner one. 

I walked up the canyon a bit further, enjoying the scenery, but a turn of direction and the low angle of the late afternoon sun threw the canyon ahead into the shade.  I doubted I would find much else in the cool darkness, so I turned back.  I wanted to cruise the blacktop roads a bit before they cooled off, so it seemed like a good time to start.

I was soon heading north into the Anza Borrego Desert, on a two lane blacktop.  At dusk I stopped the car and put my hand on the pavement - it didn't seem very warm.  I guessed that the steady wind pulled the heat away, much like it pulled the moisture out of me.  A couple of large black beetles bumbled across the road, looking much the beetles I'd seen crossing Texas roads at dusk.  That was all I saw on the roads that night.  The sun slid down, and I got lost in the dark, on the winding roads that switchbacked up and down the hills and valleys.  I tried to bear west as best I could, and ended up near Escondido, north of San Diego.  A long shortcut got me back to my hotel after midnight, to end a long day feeling smug at taking advantage of a small window of opportunity.

The conference hotel has a small creek running behind it, which I visited during lunchtime the next day, enjoying the warm sun.  There is a flash of dark brown on the trunk of a willow tree that looks to be a small swift, a Great Basin Fence Swift to be precise.  It looks just like the Northern Fence Lizards do back home, perhaps a shade darker.  It too, is enjoying the sun, and is still on the tree trunk when I return from fetching my camera, along with several more swifts.  Now I don't have to leave the hotel to find new species!  I enjoyed their noontime company the rest of that week.

I'd like to come back out to southern California some day, at a better time of year, and see what else I could find - and preferable for more than six hours!

 
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