Thursday, Your Name Is: LIZARD QUEST (Day Five)

Brain cancer is...

...finishing our lizard photo quest.

Upon our arrival, we began an animal census, tracking our sightings of different species and their numbers.  Our walk near the lake and Discovery Center today took us over an estimated 100 for lizards, by far the most plentiful land animal in our census.  Once we realized that fact, we knew needed some photos for you so that you too could appreciate our surfeit of lizards.

Today we learned that it's more difficult to take lizard pics than, say, lake pics, or goose pics.  Above you see the best of our efforts.*  Additionally, we learned that even the best of our lizard pics will likely garner few fans.  There goes that side job!

Other Animals In Our Census

• Back-throated sparrows
• Stellar's jay (They are rivalling the lizards' numbers as the jays find the birdseed on our deck.)
• Brewer's blackbirds
• Coyotes--3  (Sure, they have a bad rep back in suburbia, but here they fit in majestically.)
• Jackrabbit--1
• Chipmunk--1
• The ones that got away:  We heard that three bears (a mother and two babies) were sighted in Fawnskin the day before our arrival.

*Lizard quest:  Four frames, five lizards.  Do you see all five?  

Bonus Quest of Our Hearts

Signs along various trails encourage hikers to be on the look out for rarely sighted animals.  One is the porcupine:

Oh, to see a porcupine!  We will continue the porcupine quest in our hearts, with little hope of spotting one in our travels.

Apparently the last porcupine sighting here was a decade ago.  We do believe in you, porcupines!

We hope your quests were happy and successful today too.