La Ventana Stories

At first glance, side-blotched lizards appear to be essentially classic lizards: small, fast and brownish with a bit of blue. Yet these lizards are remarkable in their own ways. My goal this week is to teach you how to identify one — and how to impress your friends by teaching them how to identify one — along with a few fun facts.

There is some debate whether we have here in LV/ES the western or common subspecies, but it doesn’t really matter unless you plan on doing DNA samples. Side-blotched lizards are usually no more than 5 cm (2 in) long, excluding the tail, which is sometimes longer than the lizard itself. Side-blotched lizards are actually somewhat hard to find around here; they aren’t rare, they just seem to live in little pockets of desert, completely avoiding other areas. Just an hour north, however, they become ever present.

If you see a side-blotched lizard, usually you see a little movement, then you stare into the spot where you saw it for a while, then you decide it was nothing and start turning around before the lizard moves again, and stares at you with the superior air of royalty, knowing he’s untouchable. Then it runs deep into the nethers of whatever bush it was sitting next to, and there is no hope of seeing it again. 

Side-blotched lizards have pointy snouts and usually come in shades of grayish brown with lots of little spots of blue, yellow and other colors on their sides and backs. Their tails are most often just gray or slightly blue, and their eyes are black and extraordinarily snobbish, although I may be biased based on the fact that I have never managed to catch one. Somehow they always have an escape route. Anyway, they are gray, have blue spots, except for sometimes they don’t because sometimes they are striped, and sometimes they look just like every other type of lizard. For the sake of this column, we are going to stick with the most common color scheme: gray or brown with spots.

Male side-blotched lizards sometimes sport amazing reds, yellows, blues and oranges, and/or have black spots just behind their front legs. These should be the easiest traits to spot. They seem to love coming out right around the time the sun goes behind the mountains, and I have even seen them at night occasionally. There are some interesting studies about the males of different colors having different mating strategies, somewhat like a rock/paper/scissors match, but I am running out of space, so maybe more on this next time. 

What impresses me most about side-blotched lizards is how adaptable they are. They inhabit some tiny islets with just a few bushes on them; they thrive on the sidewalks of La Paz; and essentially the same lizard can be found all the way up to Washington state! They are definitely impressive lizards, even if they are a bit stuck up.

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Today I am not writing about reptiles because I believe this subject is important. Here in La Ventana/El Sargento, we are at around 24 degrees latitude, and this means we are very close to the tropics. We are lucky, for the most part, that there aren’t too many dangerous creatures in our area. Most of us are familiar with Black Widows and rattlesnakes, but there is one local dangerous insect that many people do not know about, and that is the Kissing Bug.

Kissing bugs are large, blood-sucking insects inhabiting much of Central America. Our local species, Dipetalogaster maxima, is not all that common, but I have seen individuals just outside of town. They are relatively easy to identify, as they are quite large.

The reason these insects are dangerous is because they transmit a disease called Chagas. The disease is not transmitted when they bite, but rather when they poop on you, which is basically whenever they bite. Chagas disease can be deadly. Learn more about it at the CDC.

Luckily, Kissing Bugs are nocturnal and like to inhabit rocky arroyos, so they are not often encountered. They only really feed at night so, as long as you are sleeping in a tent, you should have nothing to fear. 

The moral of this story is: Never sleep outside without a tent in Southern Baja.

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I returned back to El Sargento from the United States on the 12th of September, just in time to catch the first big rain event of the year: Tropical Storm Ileana. I had been watching this storm form on radar, trying to figure out how to pronounce “Ileana.” I knew the area had not received much rain yet this year, and I was very excited at the prospect of a rainy arrival to Baja. When I arrived — the day before the storm — as I exited the terminal at San Jose del Cabo, I smacked into a wall of heat and humidity. Though I momentarily questioned my decision to return to the hot and humid desert, the idea of rain kept my spirits high.

I love rain events in Baja because Couch’s Spadefoot Toads — somewhat unexpected residents of the driest state in North America — erupt from the ground to breed. Historically, after a big rain, a toad pond has appeared in our neighbors’ driveway; due to construction, unfortunately, this one-week-wonder pond no longer fills. So I have been working on a replacement pond. The morning of the storm, I heard raindrops on my roof at around 5am. Iliana was now officially a tropical storm. As soon as the sun rose, I was outside. The first six hours or so were a bit anticlimactic because all we experienced was a steady drizzle, followed by the rain stopping all together. It had not rained enough to fill a toad pond. 

However, there were plenty of toads! Big ones, little ones, green ones and round ones. I even found a male calling in a little puddle. In the desert, standing water doesn’t last long, so these “toads” have one of the quickest breeding cycles of all frogs. I say “toads” because spadefoots aren’t actually toads; they are their own kind of frog that has evolved a very similar body plan. But anyway, these spadefoots will lay eggs, and the eggs will hatch within 48 hours! Then the tadpoles have a race to grow legs before the puddle dries up. They can transform from tadpole to frog in a little as seven days, although it is often a bit longer. 

Hopefully we will have a bigger rain later this year, but it is not unusual that spadefoots will go years without having a chance to breed. Sometimes they only come up out of the ground once a year, or less if there is no rain. They often bury themselves up to a meter underground!

After the rain ended, I checked all the local cattle guards for stuck creatures. I found and helped many trapped frogs. Unfortunately, stuck creatures are real problem in La Ventana. Cattle guards may be useful pieces of infrastructure, but we need to stop making them with big concrete traps at the bottom. If you are going to build a cattle guard, please try to make an escape route for small creatures. One of the best ways to provide an easy way out is to leave slanted edges, or even just dirt, on either or both ends of the trench so creatures can escape. 

Fall Reptile Walks! I am going to start this WhatsApp group for reptile walks, to make things a bit easier, and help account for uncertain weather conditions. Join the group here.

Isla Espíritu Santo is an incredible island off the coast of La Paz. It is home to many interesting creatures, including two endemic species of reptiles: the Espíritu Santo Whiptail (Aspidoscelis espiritensis) and the Espíritu Santo Striped Whipsnake (Masticophis barbouri). I have never been to the island, but I have received multiple trips as gifts that all managed to fall through one way or another. I will get there eventually, and hopefully find the interesting, beautiful and endemic whipsnake. 

Whipsnakes are some of my favorite snakes. The group includes coachwhips, like our Baja California Coachwhips, the big black snakes often seen zooming across roads in La Ventana and El Sargento.

Some other members of the whipsnake family are the Striped Whipsnakes. I have seen several, though I haven’t really got a good look at one because they are very rare in Baja. If you do manage to find one, all you will see is an explosion of hypersonic dust; it makes matters worse that they like to live in between boulders. 

If you would like to hear more about my quest to catch one of these lightning bolts, check out my new Substack newsletter: Beneath the Scales. There, I dive deeper into my adventures in search of rare and elusive creatures.

Isla Espíritu Santo is home to some cool land animals, but the unbelievable sea life is the real showstopper. Some years ago, the waters around the island were home to thousands and thousands of hammerhead sharks and an amazing diversity of fish. Life was beyond imagination and it was known as the world’s aquarium. Then, in just a few years, almost all of the hammerheads were fished for shark fin soup, and now the beautiful diversity is gone. I am no fish expert —that is William’s department— however, this seems important. 

The good news is that the ecosystem can recover in just a few years if we stop fishing the reefs. This will not only bring scuba tourism back to the area, but the fish will overflow out of the preserve and bring more fish for people as well. Isla Espíritu Santo is a national park but only 4% is protected. Right now, there is an active petition aiming to turn Espíritu Santo’s waters into a reserve, which could quickly become as rich as Cabo Pulmo. 

Help to bring life back! Learn More at Pelagios Kakunjá. Sign the petition here. 

Kingsnakes are beautiful snakes. They are not easy to find in Baja but, when discovered, these striking snakes can have quite an effect. In Southern Baja, we have one species: the California Kingsnake (Lampropeltis californiae). This species has quite a large range, inhabiting many different habitats from Cabo to Oregon. Often they will be black with white bands but they can also be black with white stripes down their bodies. 

Kingsnakes are loved by many people— even by those who dislike snakes — and it’s not because of their personality. Charming though they may be, Kingsnakes are famous rattlesnake eaters. Yet Kingsnakes also eat other snakes, rodents, lizards, amphibians and birds; they are true generalists, willing to eat whatever comes their way. 

Because of their beautiful colors and hardy nature, Kingsnakes are often kept as pets. This is a bit of a problem because they are frequently taken out of the wild for the pet trade. 

Kingsnakes are very secretive. It can be difficult to find them, even in places where they are common, unless you can find a window into their favorite habitat: the subterranean world. By flipping things over (like rocks, wood boards and especially sheet metal), Kingsnakes and many other snakes can be discovered. If you do this, however, make sure to carefully put their roof back just the way you found it to preserve their habitat. 

Some people mistakenly believe Kingsnakes to be venomous, but they are not. Instead, they are very powerful constrictors for their size. In some places, Kingsnakes mimic venomous coral snakes, looking almost identical, but there are no coral snakes in Baja except for a small area near the California border. So don’t worry about any colorful little snakes in La Ventana because they are all harmless.