About the Cover…

A Litta Bitta Lizard Love

Betsy Cross

I try to photograph all the creatures that venture into my yard—the toads and the tadpoles, the dung beetles, the owls, the leopard frogs, the coral snake, our nesting birds and their fledglings, the bordered patch butterflies, the woodpeckers, the fox, the hawk—and I especially love to shoot pictures of the spring and fall migrating birds and butterflies. They’re all constantly vying for my attention, and I don’t discriminate. It’s my personal backyard bio-blitz. But I have another rule: if I don’t get the picture, I can’t count them.

These Common Spotted Whiptails, female on the left and male on the right, have tails that are up to twice the length of their body. Their total length can be up to 12 inches. Photo: courtesy Betsy Cross

I’ve taken lots of lizard pictures, mostly of the Texas spiny lizard and the green anole, but the behavior of these two long-tailed characters grabbed my attention. The male circled the female at least a dozen times. He wriggled and rubbed his booty on the ground as he paraded around her. She mostly ignored him and retreated, but he followed her and continued his routine. That was enough for me. I picked up my camera.

He made all kinds of advances toward the female over the next 30 minutes. Finally, after what appeared to be an intimate kiss and a gentle snuggle, she was sufficiently wooed.

**…and finally, wooing happened.** Photo: courtesy Betsy Cross

The mating process of the six-lined racerunner, another long-tailed lizard in the Teiidae family with whiptails, is described in Wikipedia: “When he finds a receptive female, the male will straddle her, curve his body over hers, and bite her on the opposite side [of] his cloacal region…to start copulation.” We get the picture!

Seriously, we got the picture. Photo: courtesy Betsy Cross

In their NatureWatch blog, Austin Master Naturalists Lynne and Jim Weber write that female whiptails “…lay 1 to 8 eggs in July, typically in a separate chamber of their underground burrow, sometimes as deep as 11 inches.”

The 1 to 1½-inch hatchlings will emerge from the burrow in late summer. They mature quickly and reach sexual maturity within the season. Read more about whiptails here in a blog by Kathy Raines of the Rio Grande Valley Chapter of Texas Master Naturalist™.

So if you’ve ever wondered where those adorable baby lizards come from, now you know! With a little luck and a lot of attention, maybe we can close the loop on this story with a picture of a baby whiptail in the weeks ahead.

Doves of Central Texas

The Nature of Oaks