The Blunt-nosed Leopard Lizard: An Endangered Predatory Species

For several years I traveled the USA extensively from border to border and from coast to coast, gathering photos and bits of information for our planned herpetological field guides. Always, at some point during my western jaunts, the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, Gambelia sila, came to mind.

This lizard was, I knew, a very localized federally endangered California endemic, and to have even a chance at seeing it I would have to travel to one of several areas where it still existed. So on one hot summer day I decided to visit the almost perpetually dry Carrizo Plains in search of the lizard.

By the time I arrived at this amazing and vast arid region and had bypassed the sentinel burrowing owls, had marveled at a Northern Pacific rattlesnake coiled tightly in the shade of a roadside creosote bush, and stopped to look at a Botta's pocket gopher as it trundled along, it was early afternoon. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky and the heat was so intense that I doubted I would succeed in my quest.

Actually, I had no trouble at all. As I drove slowly along, I startled a small whiptail that darted up and over the low berm. Deciding that I wanted to photograph the lizard if possible, I bolted from the car, the lizard camera in hand. The whiptail stopped for a moment beneath a creosote bush, began to move off again but was almost instantly seized by a large lizard that had appeared as if by magic at the mouth of a burrow.

The aggressor was a blunt-nosed leopard lizard, the very lizard that had drawn me to the Carrizo Plains. Success!

More photos under the jump...

A male blunt-nosed leopard lizard at its burrow: This blunt-nosed leopard lizard was surprised while basking:

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.