Coffee Table Book of: Lizards (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Lizards is a large format book of lizards, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: chameleons, geckos, bearded dragons, iguanas and monitors, the frilled lizard and the horned lizards, their heads, crests and scales seen close, their eggs, burrows and tracks, and the deserts, rainforests, rivers and rocky shores where they live, at many hours and in every season.

A male panther chameleon climbs a slender branch at sunrise in bands of turquoise, green and red, a female in soft peach and tan clasps a branch among the leaves, and another sleeps pale on a twig tip at night.

Leopard geckos hunt over flat stones at dusk and hatch from pale leathery eggs, crested geckos cling to leaves by moonlight, giant day geckos rest head down on a palm trunk and lap nectar from a banana flower, a tokay waits on a rainforest trunk at night, a leaf tailed gecko vanishes against mossy bark and a web footed gecko stands on a dune under the stars.

Bearded dragons bask on red rock at sunrise, sit open mouthed in the midday heat and eat yellow wildflowers, the frilled lizard spreads its great frill on a fallen log and hides as bark on a dead tree after rain, horned lizards lie flat on sand and cracked ground, and the thorny devil crosses red sand at dawn.

Green iguanas rest over a wide river and bask in the treetops, marine iguanas lie on black lava by the sea, and rhinoceros, desert and spiny tailed iguanas keep to dry scrub and pale sand. The monitors range from the largest of all lizards on a grassy hillside and the perentie on red sand to a water monitor by a muddy river, a lace monitor climbing a gum tree and a bright green tree monitor in the mist.

Short notes run through the book, on how lizards hunt, warm themselves and raise their young, how they change colour and shed their skin, and the many kinds of lizard alive today: bearded dragons climb onto rocks and dead branches early in the day to warm up in the first sun, the veiled chameleon wears a tall crest called a casque on its head, tallest in the male, when threatened, the armadillo lizard bites its own tail and rolls into a spiny ring, and at night chameleons sleep out on thin twigs, and their skin turns pale.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.