John Burridge

Here's a lizard.









I'm not sure what kind of lizard it is, although I'm pretty sure it's not a Blue-Bellied Lizard.








It was following a curb; I managed to get ahead of it and stood very still  and was rewarded with it scampering up to my shoes.








It reminds me of the lizards that Pamala Coleman Smith drew on the court cards for the suit of Wands.  








I always tell myself that nature close-ups like this will be useful for when I want to sketch, but the truth is I usually end up forgetting I have a photo resource to work from when I finally sit down with paper and pencil (or screen and mouse) to try to create an image.

 Resucued this lizard (one of two) from my folks' pool Sunday.  I think it's a blue-bellied alligator lizard... but I may be recalling a name made up from childhood.  I'm not sure what the lizards were doing in the pool, and it seemed odd that there were two of them; maybe they were fighting and pushed each other in; maybe it was sexy-lizard time and they got distracted.  This one had been in the pool longer, I think, as it was near the bottom and not nearly as responsive as the first one I fished out, and which crawled up the skimmer net and onto my hand.

Earlier in the day, we had noticed this dragonfly.  There are three types flying around their house:  this one, one with a clear window in its wings, and a skinnier yellow banded one (I'm away from my dragonfly book, so I can't look up their names).

One nice thing about dragonflies--aside from eating a ton of mosquitoes--is that they'll stand still long enough for a photo, and this one obliged by alighting on a car antenna.   It also perched on a bird feeder, but I wasn't able to get as close (and also the camera's auto-focus kept wanting to take pictures of the trees in the distance).