Gotta find them all! continued

My brief field guide for the park continues with the lizards, which means skipping both the fish and frogs.  Fish are easy enough to see in some of the larger ponds, but not so easy to photograph.  Meanwhile, the frogs were simply too fast for me.  Each time I walked up to a pond, I heard them plop into the water before I spotted them.  I will also be skipping the rabbit at the end for the same reason; the only rabbit that I have seen so far darted off into the bushes before I could get my camera ready.

Lizard: Anoles are the most abundant vertebrates I have seen in the park.  In particular, I find Carolina (a.k.a. green) anoles perched on many of the herbaceous plants and bushes.

A juvenile Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) shortly before it disappeared into the vegetation.

However, anoles are not the only lizards in the park.  I recently, and very briefly, saw a skink as it buried itself under the leaf litter.

Butterflies: Butterflies of quite a few different species are also very common in the park.  The most striking butterfly I have seen is the common buckeye, which I have now spent quite a bit of time chasing back and forth across the meadow.

This common buckeye (Junonia coenia) kept fluttering a few more feet away each time I approached it.

Follow the links if you are interested in seeing three more of the butterflies I have identified in the park: a tawny emperor (Asterocampa clyton), a gray hairstreak (Strymon melinus), and a dusky-blue groundstreak (Calycopis isobeon).

Heron: The ponds and the bayou -- or rather, the fish and other prey in the ponds and the bayou -- attract a number of heron and egret species.  Especially along the bayou, all I have to do is look up and down the embankment, and I can usually spot one standing in wait near the edge of the water.

A juvenile yellow-crowned night-heron (Nyctanassa violacea) out in the rain.

Lastly, why did I skip over the beetle?  I considered the generic "beetle" on the sign to be somewhat redundant, since ladybugs (featured last week) are beetles -- not bugs.  For contrast, you can see some true bugs (again) by clicking here.  There are other beetles in the park besides ladybugs, but they will have to wait until another post.