Turtle Time !!

A tortoise is a turtle, but a turtle is not always a tortoise... Okay. Now that we got that one over with!!!

[See, they're all turtles, but a tortoise is a turtle that is terrestrial. Turtles can be further defined as tortoise, "aquatic turtle" or "semi-aquatic turtle".] I always call them turtles because I prefer the sound of that word. It just rolls off the tongue better!

I've been amassing photos and movies of the tortoises, but in an effort to not take too too many photos (they are so cute in their odd way!), I don't have a lot of recent pix. Its never difficult, though, to get nice shots of turtles eating. They love eating! This spring, with all the nice native annual plants we saw this year, we were able to gather up a tasty buffet for our pet desert tortoises. Desert tortoises have been found to selectively prefer legume plants like the ones in these photos. Above, Megagodzilla is eating an Astragalus didymocarpus. To the right, Godzilla (left) is joined by Gamara. They're eating Astragalus and Lupinus bicolor. These leguminous plants are known for their nitrogen-fixing capabilities. This also benefits desert tortoises... when tortoises eat legumes, their bodies do not require as much water to metabolize the food. This is a great benefit for Mojave Desert tortoises, which experience rain only for very short times in the early spring.

And here we have Bruiser, one of our young African spur-thighed tortoises, looking very tortoisey... wouldn't you agree? Our four spur-thighs are now 5 years old, and just about to hit their growth-spurt age. They are a little larger than a grapefruit, but will grow to be over 100 pounds as adults!! (that'll be another couple decades, since they live to over 100 years old.) Next to Bruiser on the photo below is our runt, little Monster X. He even behaves like a runt - he's picky with his food, easily scared by the larger tortoises, and very very easily distracted. Usually I feed him separately from the others. Oh, by the way, these turtles are too young to know their gender, so I'm referring to them in the universal Him. In this photo, you can see the "spurs" on the thighs of Bruiser's back leg (the little horns). They protected the tortoise from predators when they lived amongst the mega fauna of Africa - lions and hyenas.

I'll leave you with a video I've called, "Tortoise Feeding Frenzy" As you can see in the movie, these tortoises live up to their names - Merciless Eating Machines. They nearly inhale their food! Spike, the final of the four to enter the movie, displays a funny turtle quality - linear movement. These tortoises seem to insist on moving forward in a strait line. If that means climbing over something... so be it... Seems like maladaptive behavior for something so clunky; but they've survived with this behavior (we believe) for hundreds of thousands of years, so it must benefit them somehow!! The video also shows little Monster X (aka Runtlinger) and his picky eating style and easy distract ability. He barely eats anything while the other tortoises inhale their greens.

Scaley Skins

We were working out in a valley in the Mojave Desert called Johnson Valley. Many people know of it because they ride motorcycles and other ORVs out there. We were there looking for rare plants. When walking, you see a whole other world. The slow side of the desert.

Amongst some rocky outcrops, we saw the rocky-outcrop-dweller, the common chuckwalla (Sauromalus obesus). This one is a male because it lacks dark cross bands on its back. Chuckwallas are a fun lizard. They're big, bold, and curious. Makes for easy viewing.

Next, we found this desert horned lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos). Doesn't it look prehistoric?!? In this first photo, we posed the lizard. That way you can get a good look at its head and flat body. The flat, round (pancake-like) body is why they're also called horney toads... but they are reptiles, not amphibians.

The desert horney toads come in a variety of colors, which generally seem to camouflage with their backgrounds. This fellow had a strong red and black coloring to it, which perfectly matched the red and black lava rocks in its immediate locality. Pretty cool! Do you see the lizard in the photo to the right? Yup, right there in the center. This way, predators like roadrunners can't find them as easily.

And finally... my favorite photo of the day - a Mojave green rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus)! And I took this particular photo! (Usually the hubby takes the close up photos of the rattlesnakes.) This is the very first Mojave green I've seen. I've wanted to see them ... I've seen the Pacific rattler, the Panamint rattler, and the sidewinder. Now the Mojave. By the way, this is the most-common rattlesnake to bite, and it has the worst bite of all of them. Seems the juveniles aren't good at biting out the proper dosage and often overdose the victim on venom. Not good! Oh, and, by the way, this particular rattler was a youngster, told by the fact that it wasn't really very green (or so I've been told by those who know).

This leads to my farewell joke. Possibly my favorite within the Redneck genre: You know you're a redneck when your final living words are... ..."Hey guys, watch this!"

San Gabriel Mountains

We're working up in the Angeles National Forest these days. ANF is comprised of the San Gabriel Mountains, a fault-lifted zone just north of the San Fernando Valley (the Valley Girls valley just north of Las Angeles). Being in the mountains is nice this time of year... but don't be too jealous. These mountains are steep, covered mostly with chaparral, and rather hot and dry.

There are still some nice critters and plants to be found, however, and we're doing our best to discover them.

This is a sagebrush lizard, which is uncommon. The male has the bright red under his chin, either to attract females or to threaten other males (or maybe me?). Who knows?

The plants aren't doing so well this year, as I've mentioned (drought year), but we've found one particular species that's just booming: the Mt. Gleason paintbrush (Castilleja gleasonii). Yes, the paintbrush, everyone's favorite, known for its brilliant red blooms and long-lasting flowering duration. This species is doing particularly well because its getting a little help from its "friends". You see, the paintbrush is a hemiparasite, which means that it derives part of its nutrients from its chlorophyllus leaves, and part of its nutrients from another plant (to which its attaches by the roots). This plant is a Forest Service Special Status and California Rare plant, which makes it especially exciting to find so many of them.

Here's a view of some of the earliest-bloomers - the chamise shrubs within the chaparral. The white dot in the background (on top of the far ridgeline) is the Wilson's Observatory. Its a landmark for the San Fernando Valley, something they can see on those (occassional) clear days. Speaking of clear skies, we had some clear ones when we were working up there, and got some views of Los Angeles at night. It was strange to be camping, and to have city lights so bright along the horizon. They just went on and on and on...

A Little Lizard Told Me...

...summer has arrived!

And with it, the emergence of our favorite lizards/iguanas, the desert iguana (Dipsosaurus dorsalis). These critters don't even emerge from hibernation until temperatures reach the mid-90's. According to my Peterson Field Guide, the desert iguana has a normal activity range at 107 F, and a max voluntary tolerance of 115 F. They are native to our area, and occur naturally in our yard. There used to be many more iguanas in our neighborhood, but development of new homes and removal of native shrubs has diminished the local populations. We don't think that peoples' pets disrupt the iguanas since their active temperature is so high, most domestic animals are seeking shade by that time of day.

To help themselves deal with the heat (because 115 air temperature is often over 125 F surface soil temp out here in the desert), the lizards will climb up into shrubs. This also helps them to get to their food, as desert iguanas are herbivores and eat leaves and flowers.

This, however does not stop them from enjoying a tasty meal worm or two. I buy meal worms from our local pet store and, once the temp gets good and hot, go outside in search of iguanas to feed. They recognize me now, and even run up to me the very first time I see them each summer, remembering tasty meals from the previous year.

In this photo, you can see me with 4 iguanas.








Here the hubby is feeding one particularly enthusiastic male that I have named Stumpy Joe. This is another photo of that same male with a juvenile iguana in the back.
You'll notice that this male doesn't have all his back toes. Normally, lizards have very elongated toes on their back feet. Either he lost them fighting with other males or evading some sort of predator (such as a road runner gopher snake or coachwhip snake).

This is a very pregnant female. She's loaded up with eggs, which she'll be laying any day now... leading to more and more iguanas in our yard. Yay!

Lastly, we have one of my favorites, an iguana I named Half-tail Willie. You can see that he lost his tail and has grown it back. In this photo you can also see his very long toes. You can also see the ridge of keeled scales down his back, an identifying mark for desert iguanas.

Saved!!

What a lucky snake! Lucky for one thing that the driver at the wheel loves snakes. For another that the driver was alert to the possibility of snakes sunning themselves on the road and alert enough to swerve just in time to avoid it.

Can you see the tracks of the car which show how narrowly this fellow was missed?!?

And here's a close up of the lucky gopher snake (Pituophis catenifer), most likely unaware that it just stared death in the face. All it cares about now is that it has to stare at my camera...

Long-nosed leopard lizard

Here's a long-nosed leopard lizard (Gambelia wislizenii) that we found while working in the desert last week. Poor guy was pretty dehydrated and tired (there's a drought going on this year and everything is having a tough time of it).
I guess he was conserving his energy, I wasn't appearing to be much of a threat, so he let me get pretty close to him to take this picture. He even jumped up onto me as he was trying to catch some flies that were landing around us.