Great Basin Fence Lizard

Description:

"A fairly small lizard with keeled and pointed dorsal scales of equal size on the back, sides, and belly. Scales on the backs of the thighs are mostly keeled, and abruptly smaller, and the rear of the limbs is yellow or orange. The sides of the belly are blue.Color is brown, gray, or black with narrow irregular crossbars. Often the color is completely black. Sometimes light markings on the sides of the backs form stripes or irregular lines, and sometimes dark blotching may form irregular bands. The belly is gray to black. Males have blue markings on the sides of the belly edged in black, a single large blue patch on the throat, enlarged postanals, and a swollen tail base. Some scales on the back become blue or greenish when a lizard is in the light phase."

Habitat:

Relaxing on a Plum tree in the backyard. "This subspecies is found in coastal and montane southern California north to Santa Barbara County and east along the mountains into the Owens Valley and Eastern Sierra Nevada region and Great Basin Desert of eastern California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Idaho. It is not found in the southern California deserts except in isolated groups at higher elevations in the Ord, Providence, and New York mountains, the Mid-hills region, and the Kingston Range.(Stebbins 2003) I have received a report that they also occur in the Granite Mountains."