1. Sand lizards
With some luck and carful stalking you often meet sand lizards waiting on the dry-stone walls of the Ölberg. Windless spring mornings offer a great chance to see them. For the sand lizards, it is important that the sun has already been shining for a while that the stone walls are comfortably warm.
That’s exactly the time when the lizards are sunbathing by pressing their body perfectly flat on the stone to absorb heat as much as possible. Why do they have that greed for heat? Like all reptiles, lizards do not have an equally warm blood, therefore, they need the heat of the sun to get their blood on working temperature.
That is even more important for their offspring. The sand lizards bury their eggs being as thin as parchment skin, in the loose sand soil and let the sun incubating the eggs.
Walking here in late summer you have the chance to see small lizards in the grass. Pampered with the best feed, small caterpillars, bugs, centipedes and fine wolf spiders, the mites achieve their full size within one year. For the lizards, it is necessary that you only observe them and do not disturb or try to catch them! Besides loose they their long tail and as result there is an open wound. That is not a nice way to make friends, isn’t it?