Oregon's horned lizards

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mrfrasier
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Oregon's horned lizards

Post by mrfrasier »

New to the forum, and this is my first post so forgive me if it's long winded. I spent basically all of the 21' field season herping the northern great basin region of SE Oregon. I hit up Washington, Idaho and Nevada a bit, but this post will focus solely phrynosoma from Oregon during the 2021 season.

I spent a lot of time targeting pygmy short-horned lizards, P. Douglasii, as they're the closest critters to find near my town. A friend of mine was awarded a grant from HLCS to study this species and he's got something in the works for the 22' field season. Here's a adult pair found, and an insitu pic of the female just emerging for the day.
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I guess I posted one too many landscape shots of my favorite spot for desert horned lizards, P. Platyrhinos. Learned my lesson when one day I visited and found it was turned into one of 3 bioblitz locations for a disjunct population of platyrhinos in southern central Oregon. I left a small polite note for whoever was running it to reach out, and never heard anything from them. I have no clue who it could be, and neither does anyone I know. They even managed to find the exact rock I posed a lizard on for a landscape shot. They also managed to (presumably) run over a lute on a primitive 2 track and left some old coffee cups in an area they cleared to park their car. After this I decided to try and find a new favorite platy spot with no success yet. This population seems pretty isolated into an ancient pluvial lakebed area.
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In the end of August, made it a goal to find all three of Oregon's Phrynosoma species in one weekend. I rallied up my buddy Spencer and we found some P. Douglasii the evening before we hit the road. I hit up my buddy Ian last minute to see if he wanted to go on a wild-goose chase for P. Hernandesi in extreme SE Oregon. This crazy fool was down to drive 12 hours one way for a weekend rocket run that had no guarantee to pay off. Spencer and I had a few hours to kill before Ian was anywhere close, so we went off and turned up a single platy while chasing around collared lizards. During this time of summer, wildfire smoke filled the sky for weeks. In my experience with Oregon's platys and dougs, hazardous air quality means no phrynos will be active on the surface. Despite poor weather conditions, we followed Alan St. John's bread crumb trail and found our target! Thank god Ian came down, as his good luck paid off and he turned up the first of 6 greater short-horned lizards. Antelope hunters had set up camp at the same location and had run over 2 adult horned lizards on primitive two track roads, one DOR specimen was collected and donated to OSU. At the time I'm typing this ODFW doesn't recognize P. Hernandesi to exist within the state of Oregon.
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This species of horned lizard is a bit harder to find ;)
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Richard F. Hoyer
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by Richard F. Hoyer »

mrfrasier'
Nice report. During my field efforts on the Rubber Boa at Fort Rock State Perk, ever so often I would encounter a pigmy horned lizard.

Richard F. Hoyer (Corvallis, Oregon)
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mrfrasier
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by mrfrasier »

Thanks Richard,
Blows my mind that boas can inhabit the arid region around Christmas valley. Ever heard any valid reports of crotalus around there?
I have yet to find any horned lizards or boas around that area yet, but I've only visited when temperatures were miserably hot.
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Jeff
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by Jeff »

mrfrasier
Pygmies are the one reptile of the Pacific Northwest that I have not seen.
My Dad lives in Medford (I'm in Louisiana), and on my first of two driving trips to visit him I planned to see a Pygmy.
I located an area in southern Lake County that was plastered with localities. To top that, an i-naturalist post showed some from a visit to the same spot. The poster stated that "these little guys were everywhere." The post was from Labor Day the previous year.
It happened that I was leaving my Dad's on Labor Day the following year, headed to find a plethora of "these little guys" as I passed by on my return home. I scanned the dirt road until I reached my target area around 10 A.M., and spent three hours searching (I've seen all of the other species of U.S. Phrynosoma totaling 315 encounters).
Well, today "these little guys" were nowhere, and so remain a goal for future trips to Oregon.
Jeff
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mrfrasier
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by mrfrasier »

Jeff wrote: December 15th, 2021, 4:30 pm mrfrasier
Pygmies are the one reptile of the Pacific Northwest that I have not seen.
My Dad lives in Medford (I'm in Louisiana), and on my first of two driving trips to visit him I planned to see a Pygmy.
I located an area in southern Lake County that was plastered with localities. To top that, an i-naturalist post showed some from a visit to the same spot. The poster stated that "these little guys were everywhere." The post was from Labor Day the previous year.
It happened that I was leaving my Dad's on Labor Day the following year, headed to find a plethora of "these little guys" as I passed by on my return home. I scanned the dirt road until I reached my target area around 10 A.M., and spent three hours searching (I've seen all of the other species of U.S. Phrynosoma totaling 315 encounters).
Well, today "these little guys" were nowhere, and so remain a goal for future trips to Oregon.
Jeff
Jeff,
That's quite an accomplishment to observe all other U.S horned lizards! In my experience, pygmies prefer specific ideal conditions, which I'm hoping my friend's upcoming study sheds some light on. Few things I've noticed are that I've never seen one out past 6pm, regardless of temps. And that I rarely, if ever see any at known spots when temps are above 80f. However, the douglasii I've observed in southern Lake County surprised me, as I found 2 higher elevation individuals active during a hot mid 80s-90f degree day. I assume higher elevation dougs tough out most temps, since they have hardly even 100 days of not being damn near frozen solid. Richard mentioned a good place to look for them, but that takes the fun out of things. Good luck with you furture search efforts for dougs!
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technoendo
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by technoendo »

Hey its mrfrasier!

Saw this post about our Hernandesi weekend rocket run and thought I'd humbly link my trip highlight video about it:

I had a blast looking for horned lizard droppings once Spencer and mrfrasier showed me a few examples entirely formed with compacted ant/insect parts. In one case, we found a fresh scat, walked in an outward spiral from it, and found a P.hernandesi about 8' away! Not much to flip out there, just a lot of wandering up and down grassy hills -- an easy and delightful way to herp! Mrfrasier did a great job sourcing herp sites, the camping was good, and we didn't have any major problems. Everything just went our way on this trip.

Image

I appreciate your interest in horned lizards, petroglyphs, and getting out into the desert or other great outdoor places in the northwest. Best of luck in your 2022 field adventures! I'll be all over the place -- hopefully we can meet up again!
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zeevng
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by zeevng »

Welcome to the forum, mrfrasier!

Super cool post, from an area I very much want to get up to when I can. Not to mention Phyrno's are always a sight for sore eyes, no matter the species.
Next time you're down in SoCal, look me up (I think we're co-followers on IG already, z_e_herping), and we can hit some phyrno spots down here. Have a couple good spots for Blainville's, and they're always cool to see.

Happy Herping! :thumb:
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mrfrasier
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by mrfrasier »

technoendo wrote: December 19th, 2021, 2:14 am Hey its mrfrasier!

Saw this post about our Hernandesi weekend rocket run and thought I'd humbly link my trip highlight video about it:

I had a blast looking for horned lizard droppings once Spencer and mrfrasier showed me a few examples entirely formed with compacted ant/insect parts. In one case, we found a fresh scat, walked in an outward spiral from it, and found a P.hernandesi about 8' away! Not much to flip out there, just a lot of wandering up and down grassy hills -- an easy and delightful way to herp! Mrfrasier did a great job sourcing herp sites, the camping was good, and we didn't have any major problems. Everything just went our way on this trip.

Image

I appreciate your interest in horned lizards, petroglyphs, and getting out into the desert or other great outdoor places in the northwest. Best of luck in your 2022 field adventures! I'll be all over the place -- hopefully we can meet up again!
Ian, thanks for adding the video on here! Indeed we got easy and had a lucky weekend that trip (despite the lack of late season crotes). When you're not on the road next year, lets meet up and chase white whale Z's in the gorge! I've got a few more spots up there I'm planning on scouting out. I hope we can make our schedules align!
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mrfrasier
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Re: Oregon's horned lizards

Post by mrfrasier »

zeevng wrote: December 19th, 2021, 6:01 pm Welcome to the forum, mrfrasier!

Super cool post, from an area I very much want to get up to when I can. Not to mention Phyrno's are always a sight for sore eyes, no matter the species.
Next time you're down in SoCal, look me up (I think we're co-followers on IG already, z_e_herping), and we can hit some phyrno spots down here. Have a couple good spots for Blainville's, and they're always cool to see.

Happy Herping! :thumb:
zeevng, I love your IG page! We've been co-followers for a while. I'll definitionally hit you up if I'm ever in your neck of the woods, likewise goes for you! Blainevilles are badass and high on my list to see! :beer:
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