Five-lined Skink

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to go herping with some birder friends looking for salamanders. Although I’ve always loved searching out turtles, snakes, toads and frogs, the world of salamanders was new to me. Since then, I’ve been able to view many types of salamanders and have enjoyed learning about them.

I’ve also become interested in skinks and last weekend while volunteering at a local scout camp I had the opportunity to search out some skink locations. I’ve observed many five-lined skinks in this area the last couple of years and this was no exception. Overall, we viewed 5 skinks and a milk snake including this Skink nest with 9 eggs.

Here is some info I gathered from the internet on Five-lined Skinks if you are interested.

There are two populations of Common Five-lined Skink in Ontario, occupying different types of habitat. The Southern Shield population can be found underneath rocks on open bedrock in forests. The Carolinian population can be found under woody debris in clearings with sand dunes, open forested areas, and wetlands. Five-lined skinks hibernate in groups under rocks or tree stumps and in rotting wood.

Five-lined skinks reach sexual maturity at just under two years of age. They breed in May and early June. Females lay two to 15 eggs in the early summer in a nest excavated under cover or within a rotting log. Several females may nest together and will protect their nest from predators. Females bask in the sun and return to the nest to use their bodies to warm their eggs, which hatch in late summer. The hatchlings are approximately three centimetres long.

Five-lined skinks are not territorial, and individuals do not have strict home ranges. These lizards eat a wide variety of invertebrates, such as insects, spiders and worms, and track prey with their keen sense of smell.

If a predator catches a skink by the tail, it will break off and begin to thrash about. The moving tail distracts the predator while the lizard escapes. Although a new tail will grow over time, the skink will have lost much of the fat reserves on which it relies to survive the winter.

The removal of important microhabitats, such as shoreline debris, wood and loose rocks, is also a serious threat to this species, especially the Carolinian population.

Other threats to the five-lined skink include road mortality, illegal collection for the pet trade and predation, especially in areas where raccoons and other predators are abundant. A study at Point Pelee National Park documented a road mortality level of almost one skink per day!