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The Lizard King

Greetings everyone!  I would like take this opportunity to officially welcome my brother Ron to the photography blogging world (cheers, hoorays, clowns.. wait scratch that last evil thought).  If you would like to check out his new site, you can visit it by either using the Blog link area in the right navigation pane our simply go here http://rondoerflerphotography.net (link here). Of course, to rub in his superior cache of birds, he leads off with a bird I do not have (dammit!).  If that wasn’t enough he includes photos of bird babies which … wait for it .. .wait for it … I do not have either.  Now before you go feeling too bad for me — and you should be by now — this foray into the wildlife blogging arena comes at an expense.  One trait of my middle brother is he is extremely competitive.  My other brother and I have just learned to live with this unique trait Ron has from the rest of our family – we considered an intervention many years back, but decided it would become a contest on how long he could hold out and opted to not waste the time.  It is because of this trait I had to break down and create an official set of birding rules for us.  This official list can be found on a previous post (link here).  Please take note of Rule 06: If you have a working blog you must feature the bird before counting.  Guess what folks, Ron has a birding blog.  As explicitly stated in our official birding rules, he now has to feature every bird on the blog before it can be officially counted.  I kind of feel bad for him.  Well, for a few minutes at least, but then I realized I was up on him like 160 to TWO (although, I am not competitive).    Regardless, check out Ron’s site – he has that thing looking really sharp.

To be honest, this post is mainly to welcome Ron and picked a post topic that I didn’t need to spend a lot of time on.

Various Lizards from Nevada - August 2013

That my friends is what I refer to as a Lizard.  I can also tell you that my lovely wife always refers to them as snakes with legs.  This specifically means she gets near hysterical when she sees one and has a tendency to rip my clothes to pieces trying to hide behind me (don’t believe me, ASK HER).

Various Lizards from Nevada - August 2013

Unlike my wife, I hope you like looking at picture of Lizards I took out on our trip to Vegas.

Hit the jump to see a few more Lizard shots!

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Slow Motion Life

Well, I kinda lied in my last post.  Ron and I had planned to do a little birding in Allerton Park yesterday, but Ron ran into a bit of bad luck that knocked him out of the event.  Probably not a bad thing in the end due to the stifling heat that we are currently experiencing out her in Flyover Country.  To put it in perspective, I had Linda drive me to the Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve.  I noticed a nice trail in the back of that park while getting in a 6 mile run there Friday evening.  We had a couple of hours after the dog show, so took some time to see if it was worth us hitting it on our next trip over there.  It is actually a pretty nice trail that runs along the Sangamon River – bad thing is after 2 miles I was soaking wet from the heat.  The feels like temperature at home when we got back was 112!

Fortunately, the heat isn’t a problem for today’s featured creature.
Tortoise in Red Rock Canyon - Nevada August 2013

That there is what they call a Tortoise.  Guessing you were thinking Turtle.  They are both reptiles and that is the common name associated with the hard shells, but there is actually a definite distinction between the two.  For starters, Tortoises are land dwellers, where Turtles spend most of their time in water habitats.  Clearly this was the case with these specimens seeing as how we took them outside the headquarters of Red Rock Canyon in Nevada.  This dwelling distinction also leads to another difference – Turtles have webbed feet and very sharp claws to navigate the water and pull themselves up on logs etc. to sun.

Tortoise in Red Rock Canyon - Nevada August 2013

Hit the jump to see a few more pictures and learn a few more facts picked up from some quick research.

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