Another Visit By Adult Skinks

Here at my cabin I see juvenile Skinks with their brilliant blue tails quite frequently. Those tails are “detachable,” and if attacked by a predator the skink can release its tail, which will continue to wiggle, distracting that predator while the Skink vanishes from the scene. A new tail will regrow, taking perhaps 6 months, and will not be as long or as perfectly shaped as the original tail.

It was a bit more than a year ago when I saw my first adult Broad-headed Skink (Plestiodon laticeps). Yesterday my granddaughter spotted a pair of these same creatures. They’ve outgrown the coloring of their bright blue tails, outgrown the obvious stripes and grown to be 12 or 13 inches long, the largest Skink in its native range of the southeastern United States.

Perhaps the reason I seldom see adult Skinks is that they spend most of their lives in the tops of trees, coming to the ground to mate and build nests for egg-laying. They are predators of insects, other invertebrates, and some vertebrates, including rodents and other lizards.

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Brenda Clements Jones

Brenda is a certified Virginia Master Naturalist, a Habitat Defender for Shenandoah National Park, and a devoted fan of Mother Nature. She lives in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Shenandoah National Park, and hikes up to the higher elevations of her mountain often to see what nature is up to. Her constant hiking companion is a camera that captures nature as it unfolds through the seasons. It’s her goal to share the natural world around her through her photographs.

3 thoughts on “Another Visit By Adult Skinks”

    1. There are adult skunks around here too! But, fortunately, I don’t see them very often. I hope it stays that way! 🙂

      Thanks bunches for reading my posts. I really appreciate having you as a reader.
      Bren

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