It’s Red Sox opening day and we’re finally getting some sun and warm temperatures. Baseball fans aren’t the only ones defrosting down in the Fenway; I just got word that an Italian Wall Lizard, our “Green Monster,” poked its head out of one of the compost piles it most likely over-wintered in.
Go Red Sox and Hurrah for the Green Monster!
Here’s an Italian Wall Lizard from last Fall in the Gardens. No new pictures yet this spring but stay tuned!
So last post was talking about a visit from October 2nd last year. Over the next several days, we made quite a few more trips to check on the lizards, and we kept finding more! Here are a few pictures:
The whole group sees a lizard!
The whole survey crew from Harvard, Boston University, and UMass Boston. Photo: Joe Martinez
All in all we’ve found over a dozen animals, pretty well spread out through the whole garden! What’s more, there were juveniles too so we know they’re successfully breeding. While no one can remember if they’ve been there for more than a year, it seems highly unlikely that they managed to spread so far afield and successfully reproduce just in 2016. My guess is that 2016 was their second year in Boston and they survived the relatively mild 2015-2016 winter by hunkering down in the garden’s many warm compost piles.
As to how they got there, now that’s a bigger mystery. The Connecticut and Hastings-On-Hudson populations we’ve previously discovered had railroad tracks right alongside them so the conduit for their northward expansion seemed pretty clear.
Just to remind you, here’s a figure showing the Greenwich lizards (magenta dots) and the Hastings lizards (green square) and both are directly on major railroad lines.
The Boston case is less clear cut. Yes, there are lots of railway lines connecting Boston to New York via southern Connecticut, but that’s a long scamper and we haven’t been hearing about sightings in between. It’s entirely possible a lizard hitched a ride on the undercarriage of a train, but for them to then scamper from South Station in Boston to the Fens (walking directions, google doesn’t have an as-the-lizards-run choice) seems like a long shot to me.
I have two more probable ideas, one is that the lizards hitched a ride with someone who grabbed them as potential pets and then released them into the garden when they got tired of feeding them. This is entirely plausible and is the cause of a lot of species introductions all around the world. Another option that I’m excited to test is that the lizards hitched a ride on some compost or mulch that was brought to the Gardens at some point in 2015. Lizard eggs move with plants and mulch all the time, even lucky adults could have made the trip without getting squashed or tumbled. One of my goals for this summer is to track down shipments coming into the garden to see if any might originate from sites with lizards. I’ll be sure to report back!
Another next step is to actually do some genetics work to try to figure out whether this population is related to the other Podarcis already in North America or if it could be a new introduction from the homeland. Those analyses are under way… I’ll report back as soon as we have an answer!
What is clear though is that the Italian Wall Lizard has made itself very comfortable in the Fenway Victory Gardens. Lizards were active all the way into the third week of November! Looking outside though we’ve just had another major snowfall, in amidst a week or two of serious cold snap, so we’ll just have to see if the lizards pop back up in a few months once we hit spring!
As they say down at the railway though, if you see something say something! As always, email me with tips if you see a flash of green in your garden or park!
I was keeping this under wraps while I was publishing the new finding and trying to pitch the story to local journalists. I’m giving a talk to the New England Herp Society this afternoon though so I think it’s time to tell you all about Boston’s newest “Green Monster” – Italian Wall Lizards!
As you may remember, I’ve been chasing Podarcis siculus in Connecticut and New York for a few years now. Upon moving from CT to MA about a year ago I’d resigned myself to having to take the train “all the way back to Connecticut” to see lizards in the wild. That was, until I got this email message:
Look at that big beautiful male siculus! I was thrilled! After a few back and forth emails I found out that Elizabeth would be going back to her garden plot that afternoon and, as it was sunny and warm I decided to run home, get my gear, and head out there to meet her. Now, as you can see from the email, this was already October and high time for lizards to be hunkering down. I surprised that this one was out and about and I wasn’t sure I’d have many more chances to check out this potentially new population.
So! I ran home, grabbed my camera and telephoto lens (a picture with a confirmed sighting can count as a voucher record if an individual can’t be caught) and grabbed my trusty lizard pole that had caught just about all the lizards from my dissertation. I nearly jogged to the T and was to the gardens just as Elizabeth arrived.
This is when my excitement got the better of me and things started going wrong…
We couldn’t find the male – he’d run off by the time we got to the garden, but looking around in the compost pile next to Elizabeth’s plot I saw a familiar dash and heard the dry-leaf scurry that’s become music to my ears. There were lizards! Many lizards! Lady lizards to go along with that male and, even more exciting, baby lizards! I lined up a great glamour shot of an adult female in the afternoon sun and clicked the shutter. Silence. I’d checked battery levels on the camera before leaving (80% – no problemo!) but I’d left home without a memory card in my camera! (OOF! C’mon Colin!) I was too embarrassed to tell Elizabeth – what a rookie move. So, I knew I had to catch one to confirm the finding!
(Me, happy to see lizards in Boston but as of yet unsuccessful in the hunt. Note my camera sitting in time-out. Photo credit to Elizabeth.)
Alright, but the female was still there – unperturbed by the lack of picture taking so I lined up, steadied the noose pole… swung… and caught a stick! (internal monologue: “Argh! I caught hundreds of lizards all over Greece… hanging over rock walls and out of car windows… How can I miss the first sighting in Boston?!”). I collapsed the pole, reset the string, and telescoped it back out for another try. That’s when the pole broke. Seriously. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I managed to separate the final two segments of the pole (18 inches or so) from the remainder, and, here I was, holding two poles, one too short to approach the lizard and the other, incapable of anything more useful than scratching its back.
By this time the lizard had moved on.
I don’t know if I managed to cover this misstep from Elizabeth. In my mind I was sure she was wishing she’d emailed an actual lizard expert. She was unreservedly cheery though as we continued scoping around for more lizards but soon after had to leave for a meeting. I opted to stay and started working on my lizard pole. After a good deal of poking and prodding (and some colorful exhortations) I got piece 1 sufficiently jammed into piece 2 that it was worth giving capture another try. I found that female again, lined up the shot, and…
caught her!
I didn’t try any more catching that day but in all, saw 7 lizards – a remarkably healthy population!
Next post I’ll tell you about the next visits!
These little lizards in NY and CT sure are capturing a lot of peoples’ imaginations! The story has been picked up now in quite a few places! Here are a few that you might like to check out:
First and foremost, Peregrine Frissell, the author of the first Greenwich Time piece that started the momentum wrote a terrific follow up after going out into the field with Max, Greg, and I. You should definitely read it here – he had a photographer out in the field with him who got a bunch of GREAT shots!
That story’s been taken up in the Washington Times and by SFGate all the way out in California. Peregrine’s piece also inspired a post on the Mother Nature Network.
The NYTimes piece by Jim Dwyer really took off, and for good reason. If you haven’t seen it yet I’d highly encourage you to read it.
You can also catch the story at (e)Science, The Barre Montpelier Times Argus, NewsInn.org (with a cool (uncredited) header photo), WorldPrimetime, Singapore News, Headlines News 24, Digital News World, World of Online News. Alright, I’ll admit most of those are just news aggregators scraping off NYTimes headlines, but the Times did send the article out in the day’s Evening Briefing so that’s super exciting!
In searching for all those links (there are about twice that many easily found on google) I did find one gem. According to NewsDiffs, a site that tracks changes in articles after they are first published, the NYTimes article was first called “Immigrants To New York, Small but Fit, Seek New Turf.” I’m glad he swapped to “A Lizard That Made It in New York Heads North.”
I’m excited that these lizards are resonating with people and I’m looking forward to more lizard trips in the future to keep you updated on where they’re going and what they’re doing!
I just returned from another trip down to Greenwich looking for Italian Wall Lizards. They’re still there and going strong! Right now we’re trying to find new populations and figure out just how far up the coast they’ve made it. As near as we can tell, so far, their northernmost extent seems to be right around the Cos Cob train station. If you’ve seen any lizards north or east of Cos Cob harbor definitely let me know!
Here are a few pictures of lizards from these last trips:
I like this picture – can you see the male hiding behind the female, further up the wall?
This fellow is trying to get into the basement!
Here’s Max, chasing a lizard into the vegetable garden.
This weekend a great article about the Italian Wall Lizards in Greenwich was published in the Greenwich Time. Give it a look here. Thanks to Peregrine Frissell for the interview.
I’m excited because new tips are starting to roll in about lizards in Southern CT and New York. It turns out lizard diversity in the area is higher than expected – we’re getting reports of some other species too:
Here’s a cute little Sceloporus:
(Photo credit: K. Ladd)
And here’s Anolis sagrei, the “festive anole” a long way from home!
(Photo credit: K. Eisley)
Very cool lizards but we’re on the lookout for this guy, Podarcis siculus:
Here are a bunch more pictures. Email me to let me know if you think you’ve seen one in your backyard!
Exciting news! There’s a new lizard species making its way into New England. It is called Podarcis sicula (the Italian Wall Lizard), and it’s officially in Greenwich CT, just over the New York state border. I’ve been down to visit the area half a dozen times now looking to see where the lizards are and in what number. Now that the official description is published, I want to fill you in on some of the back story.
It all started with this Facebook post just before I was coming back from Greece last summer:
I’ve blotted out names for privacy’s sake, but as you can see, the landowner was spot on! This is a (very) pregnant female Italian wall lizard. He even gave some really plausible suggestions for how it got there – by tracks or by truck.
I couldn’t believe that after months of studying this little gal’s cousins in Greece (Podarcis erhardii is very closely related to sicula – See how similar they look), there was a population living just over an hour down the road from home base. As soon as I got back, Max and I went down to see who we could find. As we were early for a meeting with this homeowner, we went looking for nearby rock walls (my go-to). Our searching was haphazard and unsuccessful until we found ourselves near a pet store – excellent sources for information on pet lizards that might have gotten out, or reports of nearby reptiles that seem out of the ordinary.
To our amazing good fortune the highschooler working the reptile section had actually seen some of these little lizards in Greenwich! They were living behind his girlfriend’s house just down the road. He very kindly gave us her address and, (much to her father’s surprise) we showed up on their doorstep just a few minutes later asking about lizards.
We were in the right spot. This landowner showed us a picture his son had snapped of the species just a couple weeks earlier. We didn’t find any lizards there, then, but wandering next door we got our first glimpse. It was official, they were in CT.
Our next stop was the house of the original poster on Facebook. His yard has a really strong population of males, females, juveniles and adults. We were able to snap a few more pictures:
And even catch a couple:
What’s the connection between these properties? The Metro North Railroad running right through the backyards.
Right now our working theory is that the lizards are hopping on the tracks and working their way north from large, known populations in NY. I’ll talk more about that though as we get more info this summer.
I’m adding a new page to the header just for the Lizards in Connecticut project. I’ll be updating that with maps and any new information as we get it (we currently have DNA out to a lab for analysis… exciting!) Stay tuned by subscribing above or following along on twitter (@colindonihue)
