And the winner is…

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis 'Stubby' patrolling territory
… Stubby, with 6 to 4 odds.

Out today doing some yard work, and spotted this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) skipping along between fence posts, definitely much spookier than the last time I saw him, but I’m putting this down to not being preoccupied with staking a claim to this territory and thus having a natural level of discretion. Nonetheless, I stalked him until he both returned to the exact same post that many of the disputes occurred on, as well as displaying his telltail – finally, I have a way to tell at least one of the anoles apart.

I also got a few better frames, too.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis 'Stubby' displaying scars from territorial fights a week ago
Remember when I said that I wasn’t seeing much in the way of injuries? They’re a bit more apparent here, but I also suspect most of these will vanish with the next molt. I’ll keep an eye out for the other guy so we can compare.

This particular image might be portraying his annoyance with me, not just from my proximity, but the fact that I had the back gate open, not a meter away, and thus his normal path across the backyard had a huge (to him) gap in it. He’d have to go all the way down to the ground and scamper across open territory before climbing back up again on the other side to resume his patrols, all because I wanted to dump some pond debris outside the fence. I have no doubts he was eyeing my arms and thinking I was lazy for not just leaving the gate closed and hurling the stuff over it.

I’ll have more pics later on, perhaps even of a new photo goal, but for now, one more anole, because.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis perched in potted Japanese maple
Many meters away on the deck, another anole, a female I suspect, jumped onto the potted Japanese maple there and paused among the leaves in a photogenic way, so I took a moment to be fartsy. This will likely be a print soon.