Apulian stories - Lizards and other visitors

Apulian fields are full of lime stone rocks and gravel. To be able to plough their fields, farmers have been collecting thoses stones for centuries and have built dry stone walls on the borders between fields. Our house was fenced by such a wall, too. They are an ideal living space for lizards and I have seen plenty. Here is a selection.

on an olive tree

a very long tail .... still the original

here with a regrown tail - they grow without the original colour and dots

This poor guy took an involuntary swim in the pool and could not get out. After his rescue he was so cold, he could not move for several minutes and had to pose for some portraits.

This lizard was hiding under a rosemary bush. 

He saw me but was less scared than others and waited half hidden watching me. I crouched low with my macro lens and waited patiently. After a while he decided I was no cat and posed no danger. His curiosity won over. He slowly slowly emerged from his hiding place,

 and slowly slowly moved closer to have a look at me and inspect the lens! Courageous ! 

Other visitors to our house were beautiful red and blue dragon flies: 

I had the ambition to capture one in flight, but they are so fast and small, and their flight manouvers  are so erratic, that the autofocus had a hard time. 

a grasshopper

and a much slower visitor.

The Cat and the Lizard

This is a series of images I took during last year's vacation in Italy. 
A young female cat came to visit us at the house that we had rented for the holidays. We gave her cream and milk and she showed up most mornings after breakfast. 

A couple of days into our vacation she must have felt, she needed to thank us and reply in kind. 
When I saw that she was crouching low and getting into the hunting spirit, I got my tele zoom, put shutter speed on 1/1250 sec and tried to catch images of her chase. During a hunt, cats move so fast, that only a very fast shutter speed can freeze her movements. At least 1/1000 sec is required, if you don't want to have a blurred cat. 

She had found not a mouse but a small lizard that lived abundantly in the stone walls surrounding the garden.

 Things moved fast after that - she played with the poor animal in the typical cat's behaviour and the lizard lost its tail.

She left him lying as a present for us. We tried to save him in the shade, but the lizard did not have a chance :(.

A few days later, walking back from lunch, I met her outside on the path, when she suddenly jumped in my way with a miauw. She led me to the side, where a small cat was hiding in the bushes, and she lay down and nursed her child. I was wondering why she had done that, drawing my attention to her hidden and slightly frightened child.  I thought then, that we might see both of them the next day for breakfast. 

It took two days, but then the mother showed up again, circling around the garden with miauws, jumping up and down the surrounding wall, until we saw a young kitten hiding in the bushes up on the wall. With lots of coaxing, she led her very shy daughter down to the dish of cream and introduced her to us. 

We are staying in the same house this summer - I wonder whether we will see them again?