European Wall Lizard; friend or foe?

On my parents acreage, and everywhere that I hike nearby, the native Northern Alligator Lizards are pretty much gone. They have been replaced by invasive European Wall Lizards, in MASS quantities around the garden, where there are rock walls, cracked cement, logs walls, and rockpiles everywhere. Excellent lizard habitat, on purpose... but pretty darn good even before that.

I was generally OK with this; there certainly wasn't any reversing of the trend, these things are here to stay. I figured any lizard was a good thing overall, and they're very entertaining company, plus I hoped they would eat the slugs!

Now I'm getting a little concerned. There are no signs of any mason bees in the freshly cleaned house on a post above a rock pile; I think the lizards got the local bees along with those we bought. They climb a lot more than the native lizards, and there are a lot more of them.

Today I watched one climb into an apple tree, 8 feet off the ground, by way of a twig resting against a fence, and catch a huge dragonfly, which I really would have preferred kept eating our massive crop of mosquitoes. They eat spiders, and all manner of ground insects, but aren't interested in the smaller pests or flying things. Never seen one eat a slug, and there are still plenty around...

On top of that, I read recently that these lizards will eat fruit/berries... and something stripped my 6 haskap bushes again this year, without breaking any branches or making a mess like birds often do. I have never tasted a ripe Haskap from these bushes after 3 summers! Same thing happened last fall with my chilean guava bushes. I'm tempted to get a berry monitoring camera!


So, anyone have any experience with these little buggers? Do you consider them a net positive in your garden? Have you seen them eating berries? Noticed a decrease in large predatory bugs, or increase in mosquitos and other flying pests?

Are you talking about geckos, short with little rubber suckers on their feet?

Cats bring these in as well as "regular" lizards, the ones that can't climb. The regular lizards just give up and die, whereas the geckos go straight up the wall behind a picture or to the ceiling to get away from the cat. Then they live for months in the house doing a great job of making sure there are no flies or mosquitoes. They are especially good at eating mosquitoes.

I've seen the regular lizards eat leaves from my palm seedlings, and my pea and pepper plants. Never seen a gecko eat any vegetation, come to think of it I've never seen a gecko in the garden, just the ones in the house delivered by cat. I see plenty of regular lizards outside. I assume the geckos are just better at hiding.

Nope, these are definitely lizards not geckos. Don't think geckos could handle the climate here.

To be more specific, these are Podarcis muralis maculiventris (http://www.lacerta.de/AS/Artikel.php?Article=82)

Despite lacking the handy traction pads of a gecko, they seem to be pretty darn good climbers; they easily scale vertical wooden fenceposts, for example.

Those look like the ones I am calling "regular" lizards. They can climb over rocks and up rough rocky garden walls but no chance climbing in the house. But they do eat a lot of stuff in the garden, so much so that I have to plant my young trees in plastic bottles to stop them being eaten.

They seem to eat the leaves at the driest times. I guess they are doing it simply to get water. Maybe leaving some water out for them would stop the leaves being eaten, but at the same time might attract more of them. A cat or two will decimate the lizard population very quickly. It's like shooting ducks for a cat, they don't even have to be hungry.

We have them here too.

The rock walls have about 4 lizards per square foot. So far the only benefit I've seen is that the chickens love them. We have quite a few expert lizard hunting hens now.

They don't appear to eat any plants here, but we have water out for the livestock, so maybe that stops them. Haven't seen a slug in over three years, so something's eating them. I would have expected some slugs to return once the ducks left the area, but no slugs and lots of lizards.

The guys at my house have no trouble climbing the side of the house to the second story window. Kind of freaky having a lizard look in at me while I'm brushing my teeth.

When I want to catch them, I put about three inches of water in the bottom of a three or five gallon bucket, leave something so the lizards can climb up to the bucket, like a stick. The lizards go in the bucket and can't climb out again. Chickens are happy about their free meal.

I've been meaning to look up what they eat and decide if I want to reduce their numbers or just let them be.

Edit to add - Do you think these lizards are edible? Edible to humans that is. I imagine gutting them, put them on a stick, then toasting them over the fire. Might be tough though. Sounds crazy, but it's a serious question.

Well, I caught one, as per your method R; it's living in a big jar in the greenhouse whilst I perform assorted dietary experiments, in hopes of better understanding my new reptilian overlords... If I learn anything without accidentally offing the poor creature I'll report back.

We have a definite duck deficiency/slug surplus; the current control is slug traps, and we are still catching lots. Lots and lots and lots. So I have a hard time believing this embarrassment of lizards is consuming them; surely we'd have less slugs by now. Most are tiny, too, seemingly perfect lizard snacks.

I can see chickens really getting along well with these guys, yummy snacks! Sadly there will be no chickens here, and the cat is strictly an indoor beastie since she nearly killed herself swallowing something pointy. Plus it's not like I really want ducks or chickens in the garden itself, so the impact would be from population reduction rather than area exclusion...


I would bet they are edible to people... but I would doubt that they are tasty. Only reptile I've eaten was rattlesnake, and it was *vile*...

They showed up in my area about 4 years ago, and the population has truly exploded this year (mind you, the rabbit, deer, and human populations have also exploded - it just a nice place to live, I guess?)

I will confirm that they eat berries - at least strawberries as my friend has caught them in the act.

I think I will try R Ranson's bucket trick. They have not populated our back field where the chickens live, but have near the front of our property and I have some young chickens that could use more variety in their diets!

For decades, we've had wasps nesting in our metal shed and in Hubby's dry-docked sports car. This year, I'm not seeing any wasps. D Nikolls thought they might have eaten all his mason bees, and now I'm wondering if they would have attacked the wasp nests?

My wasps have always been quite cooperative about eating Cabbage butterfly larvae and not stinging me.

Does anyone else know anything about a wasp crash, beyond the usual "all insects are in peril" issues?

I haven't had any more luck than occasional chance with the lizards getting caught in a bucket. Maybe I need to add some sort of bait?

Yes, these little buggers:


source

From the link above. My friend says her local crows are now learning to hunt them. I wonder if the Robins could figure it out.

Howdy,


Post Today 11:51:53 AM     Subject: European Wall Lizard; friend or foe?
Yes, these little buggers:

That photo looks like what I have called, "alligator lizard" here in S. Oregon.

I also have California Fence Lizard/Blue Belly here, in great #'s more than the other one.
I think of lizards more as "friends".

randal cranor wrote: That photo looks like what I have called, "alligator lizard" here in S. Oregon.

The European import has been taking over the territory of what we call the Norther Alligator Lizard:



https://saltspringconservancy.ca/northern-alligator-lizard/

https://bcinvasives.ca/invasives/european-wall-lizard/

The new arrival is currently out-competing the native Alligator lizard which tends to be much shyer of humans and it has had a lot of habitat loss.

I fully expect that eventually they will become balanced in our ecosystem, as most species considered "invasive" often do. Our non-native Robin population (which can also fledge several hatches per year) goes up and down, but when it's up, the local Owls start raiding Robin nests. I expect that more things than cats and crows will decide that wall lizards are yummy and as suggested above, maybe even Humans, although the ones I'm seeing are generally pretty small and hardly worth the effort.

I assure you that I am quite happy to coexist with lizards and let nature take its course. I was just wondering if others had noticed a significant drop in wasp population and wondered if the lizards were behind it. They may not be - we've had a very atypical spring, so it may be that the wasps just haven't emerged yet in sufficient numbers for me to notice them. I did see a beginning nest after I posted earlier.

We used to have pretty little lizards.

Then we got a cat.  No more lizards.