California whiptail

In brief

Aspidoscelis tigris munda, Teiidae, order Squamata.

- Resident, and out in the hottest part of the day
- Native to California
- Eats insects and spiders, hunted on foot

Where it lives

Open sunny ground with loose soil and sparse brush, through the Sierra Nevada foothills, the edges of the Central Valley and the Coast Ranges. It wants bare ground to run on and litter to dig in.

When you see it

Photographed on August 26, 2026, at a quarter to twelve, out on open gravel in full sun.

What it eats

Insects, spiders and scorpions, found by digging. It hunts on the move, scratching through litter and loose soil, where a fence lizard sits on a rock and waits for something to walk past.

Here

The easy mistake with anything this long and thin here is an alligator lizard, and this is not one. The scales on the back are fine and granular instead of large keeled plates in rows, the head is narrow and comes to a point, the legs are long, and there is no fold of loose skin down the flank.

The tail runs to more than twice the length of the body, and the pale stripes with dark bars between them are what this one carries in place of the clean lines a young whiptail has.

Field guides often file it under western whiptail, which is the species. This is its California subspecies, and the northern one, so a guide may name it either way.

It was out on bare gravel in full sun at a quarter to twelve on an August morning, which is the thing worth knowing about it. It works in heat that puts the other lizards under cover, and it is moving the whole time it is out.