Monday, June 04, 2007

European green lizard


Sorry, couldn't think of a zappier title than that - it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Came across this fellah, and a quick google seems to indicate that, by the blueness of its throat it is a fellah, so that's not just me being soppily anthropomorphic, sunning himself on a rock beside the lake at Jugon-les-Lacs at the weekend. He hasn't been digitally enhanced and really was this colour. He posed quite happily for me for some minutes, and didn't even seem concerned by Molly running back and forth nearby. I've never seen a lizard like this before, only the little brown jobs which I occasionally see in the garden in hot weather and which become more and more commonplace as you travel south; he was really quite large, at least 30cm with his tail, if not larger.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! He is amazingly handsome.
i grew up in the desert southwest of the US and we had loads of lizards, but nothing as colorful as this fellow. He is a marvel!

Thimbleanna said...

Look at those colors -- Fabulous pictures you've taken!

Anonymous said...

Ooh, what a glorious green and so lucky you were able to capture him into such great photos.

Anonymous said...

I used to wear lizard earrings when I lived in Louisiana. Green with pink throats.

Those are really crisp pictures, and he has loads of razzle

Avus said...

What a beautiful creature!

Fire Bird said...

You had a special visitation!

meggie said...

Fabulous photos! What a stunning colour he is, beautiful.

herhimnbryn said...

Handsome indeed and such colour!. Your photographs have highlighted his details superbly.

Zhoen said...

Bold, jazzy green fellah.

Granny J said...

Beautiful guy, beautiful pix.

Lucy said...

Thanks all. It's funny how different one's reaction is to lizards than snakes, and yet looking at the head they are not so different. My instant feeling when I saw him was intense joy, not even startled, a visitation indeed!
The colour really is remarkable, 'jazzy' is a good one, and he does look too exotic for northern Europe.
Marly, the earrings one wears at different times in life, interesting isn't it? At one particularly fraught, angry, vulnerable period I took some pleasure and comfort in a pair of silver studs shaped like little whirling scimitars. Like most earrings I eventually lost them, though a favourite pair of sun and moon made by a Somerset silversmith I've succeeded in hanging on to for at least 15 years, and always come back to.

Lee said...

What colour will it be when it's ripe?

Anonymous said...

Well, I was three or four at the time. My playmate Maxine taught me how to fasten the lizards onto my earlobes... And there they hung with a bad case of TMJ, wishing and palpitating!

I loved Louisiana; why did they ever take me away?

Lucy said...

Lee - I don't know, I've never seen a ripe one.
Marly - now I'm troubled and puzzled. Were they real lizards? And for some reason I assumed you had the pink throat, now I see it was the lizards, and these kinds of misreadings are happening more and more, and what is TMJ? Oh would that I were an airy light-tripping poetic soul like everybody else instead of struggling in the baser element like what I do! Oh woe!

leslee said...

What everyone else said - what a beauty! Lucky for you to have spotted him - surely they must be omens of good luck or something, no?

annie said...

terrific specimen! both of photography and lizard-kind.

Anonymous said...

Hi Lucy--

"Trubba not!"

Yes, real, the poor little things. Didn't seem to hurt their scampering mechanism, when we took them off.

TMJ=temporal mandibular joint. Hope I spelled that right...

Anonymous said...

Permission to pinch a lizard photo for my wildlife section, please?