Most of us know why the phrase, changing colours like a ‘girgit’ came about. An Oriental Garden Lizard can change its colours to suit a situation, mostly as a camouflaging mechanism. It assumes the colour of the surface it is on. This trait gives it its scientific name Calotes versicolor, where ‘versicolor’ has been derived from the latin words verso (“turn”) and color (“colour”).
The Oriental Garden Lizard is perhaps one of the most common reptiles that we may stumble upon in our backyard. It is a natural biological pest controller that keeps a check on the insect population in the ecological system.
It should hardly come as a surprise then that this lizard is an insectivore, feeding primarily on insects. These lizards prey mainly on crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies, and can sometimes also eat rodents or smaller lizards.
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Oriental Garden Lizards are vertebrates, meaning they have a spine or a backbone. Their usual foraging technique is to sit and wait, where they spend most of their time perched in one location waiting for their prey to pass. Then, with a quick burst of speed, they sprint after their prey, snatching them up with their tongues.
When these lizards feel threatened, they often drop their tails as a defence mechanism. It is a rather nifty evolutionary trick. Most lizards are born with a line of weakness in their tail, technically called a fracture plane. The tail when detached, whips and wiggles around since the nerves are still firing. This wiggling distracts the predator, which gives the lizard enough time to run away. This process of self-amputation is called autotomy.
Males become highly territorial during breeding season. Their heads and throats turn red during this time. They try and ward off other males from their territories by displaying continuous push-ups. They tend to attract females by inflating their throats and brightening the red colour.
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Lizards also lay eggs — that is, they are oviparous. They lay about 10-20 eggs and bury them under moist soil. Six or seven weeks later, they’re ready to hatch.
One serious threat to these natural pest controllers is the use of insecticides and pesticides in our gardens. These chemical-laden insecticides often kill their prey base which either forces them to move to a different territory or die after ingesting these infected insects.
Natural pest controllers do far more than what we give them credit for. They naturally protect our gardens and rid them of harmful insects. The use of organic insecticides and pesticides is far more beneficial for this neighbourhood lizard that helps in maintaining the sensitive balance in the ecosystem.
The writer is the founder of the NINOX - Owl about Nature, a nature awareness initiative . He formerly led a programme at WWF-India as a naturalist and is the Delhi-NCR reviewer for Ebird, a Cornell University initiative, monitoring rare sightings of birds in the region