Pacific Northwest
Reptiles & Amphibians
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Common Sagebrush Lizard - Sceloporus graciosus
Western Sagebrush Lizard - Sceloporus graciosus gracilis
Baird and Girard, 1852
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| Adult, Klamath County, Oregon | ||
| Habitat | ||
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| Habitat, 6,200 ft. Klamath County, Oregon (shore of Crater Lake) | Habitat, 4,400 ft., Lake County Oregon | Habitat, 4,200 ft., Lake County Oregon |
| Short Videos | ||
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| This movie starts just after a male Western Sagebrush Lizard ran up the face of a large a rock outcrop and tackled a huge female who is full of eggs and showing her orange breeding color. He continues to harass her and she moves slowly with her body and her tail elevated defensively. Then he settles in on a ledge above her while she rests. (She occasionally leaped after flying insects which landed nearby, but I could not get that on video.) | A male Western Sagebrush Lizard in Contra Costa County runs between rocks, stopping to do his push-up display. This is the same male just before he ran up the rock and chased the female in the previous video. | I followed a sagebrush lizard around one morning at my campsite with a video camera as it crawled over a large fallen tree, then foraged around eating small insects. |
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| These three short videos show some interactions between a male and two gravid female Western Sagebrush Lizards on an afternoon in late June in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Tulare County. In the first video, they are separated but the male jumps down to join a female and the third comes down from her rock, then as their shade disappears, they move into a sunny patch only a few feet away from the camera to bask. The other two videos show lots of push-ups, tail elevating, shuffling around, and even what looks like snuggling. | ||
Northwest Reptiles and Amphibians
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