This Sonoran Collared Lizard was in the Collection of Will Wells.
Tom had directed me up some rather horrible road that ascended into the mountains in the interior of Organ Pipe National Monument. The Trooper bounced and spun its way upwards. Tom sat there, intermittently singing to himself and complaining about the bumpiness of the ride. We had just gotten some nice photos of chuckwallas on granitic roadside outcrops, and now hoped to add to the collection photos of the Sonoran collared lizard, C. c. nebrius. Somehow, with a memory that often reflects that Tom is in his autumn years, he remembered seeing some specimens of this drab lizard on an earlier trip he had made through these mountains.

Eventually he directed me to park near a boulder-strewn expanse of weakly sloping mountainside, and issued a series of instructions: don't scare the lizards, don't take any pictures until I've taken mine, don't this...don't that...and above all, don't take its picture against a contrived background (this latter referring to my taking photos of difficult species in "naturalistic," as opposed to natural, setups). Tom pointed to a distant rock and stated that it had been there that he had seen the first collared lizard on his previous trip.
"You mean like the one that's sitting there now?" I asked.

And sure enough. There sat an adult male Sonoran collared lizard.

Although this race is second only to the Chihuahuan collared lizard in drabness, actually sighting a specimen was nonetheless exciting. It added a new dimension to our overall picture of this wary and wonderful lizard species.