Sunday, April 03, 2011

It's not easy being green!


Upon checking the status of my tiny lemons this morning, I discovered something else was checking them out also!


This little fellow is a Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis) which is the only anole native to Florida.  You can tell it is a male by the presence of the pink dewlap he's displaying in the photo below.

Although I'm not a fan of reptiles (sea turtles exempted, of course!), I am happy to see this little fellow in my yard.  The population of green anoles is being seriously depleted by the invasion of non-native Cuban brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) which are larger, compete for food, and, sadly, kill our daintier Green anoles.

5 comments:

Sprocket said...

DJ, if you took these photos, they are fantastic. Nice to see you had a welcome visitor to your lemon tree.

Loui♥ said...

Beautiful photos DJ!!
thanks for sharing!!
Hugs,
Loui♥

Barrier Island Girl said...

Thanks, Betsy! I'm glad you and Loui enjoyed the little anole in my tree this morning.

Yes, I take all the photos on my blog...with the exception of two or three throughout the years I've been blogging. In those cases I've always given photo credit.

This little fellow was a surprise, but oh so cute, especially when his dewlap was extended. I've only seen orange-red dewlaps on anoles, never a pink one like this.

Sandy said...

I love those little guys. I just got one out of the house today.

Vicki Holdwick said...

I love lizard types. And he is a beauty.

Lovely pix!

xoxo