When is the best time for Common Lizard-watching? Probably now – the weather isn’t too hot and can be changeable, plus the year’s crop of babies are very keen to come out and bask rather more obviously than their parents. So it was at Thames Road Wetland on Wednesday September 9th, when 16 animals were counted along the roadside bank which, being constructed of very compacted gravelly material can, in fact, get very dry, being steep and south-facing. Most were indeed babies, and were taking advantage of old car tyres distributed to create ideal basking sites that warm up quickly and hold that heat.
Baby Lizard basking on old car tyre. (Photo: Chris Rose)
The bonus was that a medium-sized Grass Snake was doing the same thing, it even went in on being disturbed, but eventually came back out again in Lizard-like fashion.
Grass Snake basking on a car tyre. (Photo: Chris Rose)
Bexley is one of the two or three best Boroughs in London for declining Common Lizards, which are Biodiversity Action Plan species. The Council’s complacent and lamentable response to this had already been to sanction building on 2 sites inhabited by the animal since 2009, before agreeing in March this year to the destruction of a large part of a third, such that only half the space required on the basis of the measured population density will be left.
Chris Rose.
