{"id":26655,"date":"2020-07-27T02:20:40","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T06:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=26655"},"modified":"2020-07-27T02:20:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T06:20:40","slug":"now-im-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2020\/07\/now-im-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"Now<\/em> I’m happy"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, you surely remember when I first noticed a Carolina anole<\/a> (Anolis carolinensis<\/em>) in the yard, and I was pleased because I was hoping to get some established and this was the first sign? And then, a month later I saw it again<\/a>, proof at least that it was still hanging around? Well, I was wandering around the yard a few hours ago while on the phone, shining a flashlight around casually, and got greeted with this:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"very
That’s a very young one, obviously hatched nearby, because its overall length (with its long whip tail) is less than 60mm, meaning the body itself is maybe a hair over 20, and the head only 5mm wide – that’s less than a pencil. It could sit comfortably on your little finger, is what I’m saying, though here it’s perched on the Japanese maple, right up top where I could spot it easily.<\/p>\n

Let’s go in a little closer.<\/p>\n

\"very
I’m doing a slight disservice with these photos, since being this close isn’t giving a good impression of how cute and tiny it is, but I had no way to provide useful scale without spooking it, and of course<\/em> I’m still going in for the portrait shots.<\/p>\n

This is more success than I was expecting – having a new brood, I mean, since I wasn’t sure if we even had more than the one adult. And actually, it probably shouldn’t be called a ‘brood,’ since they lay only one egg at a time, as I just discovered while researching details for this post. Certainly an auspicious start, but also slightly concerning, since a little over a meter away, one of the resident Chinese mantises had just molted into adult form, massing easily many times the size of this lizard, and quite capable of taking it as a meal. I’d feel better about there being more than one.<\/p>\n

By the way, I tried to be welcoming, and provide a little mist for drinking water – the mantids adore this – but the anole got a little panicky at the touch of the water droplets so I stopped. It’s in an area packed with potted plants receiving routine waterings, with lots of prey insects, so it’s got the basics covered;<\/strong> it just has to avoid predators. We’ll have to see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, you surely remember when I first noticed a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) in the yard, and I was pleased because I was hoping to get some established and this was the first sign? And then, a month later I saw it again, proof at least that it was still hanging around? Well, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[531,4081,3196,3511,3808],"class_list":["post-26655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-anolis-carolinensis","tag-carolina-anole","tag-juvenile","tag-luck","tag-newborn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}