![]() ![]() (Not to worry, there is only one venomous lizard in the US: The Gila Monster of the Southwest.) If you pick up a skink, incidentally, you may have a first-hand experience on how strong their jaws are. They wait in ambush for spiders, beetles and other invertebrates to wander close enough for the skink to dash out and grasp them in their powerful jaws. There appears to be a certain amount of learning in losing one's tail researchers in California found that once a young skink has had a close encounter of the near-fatal kind it seems to be more cautious. However, it too will break off if the need arises. In time, it will grow another tail, but it won't be as long as the original. The blood supply to the missing tail is immediately shut down and the young skink slithers off to live another day. The kestrel swoops down, grasps the blue tail and, voila! The tail breaks clean off the lizard's back end! Because nerves in the tail have short-circuited, it starts thrashing when it leaves the skink's body and the kestrel is conned into believing it has the whole lizard-but ends up with just the blue tail. ![]() What does the kestrel see first? You guessed it, that bright blue tail flailing along behind as the skink scampers through the sand and sage. When a skink is trying to escape from a kestrel (a small falcon that dines on lizards, mice and insects), they can run like blue-bloody-blazes in that snake-like wriggle. It's as though they're not quite sure what they should do with those snazzy-looking legs, so to propel themselves faster, they wriggle their bodies from side to side as they run. Skinks, unlike some lizards, move almost like a snake. Moreover, there is a great survival strategy behind that blazing blue tail. If you get down and look it in the eye, you will see bright orange scales on the upper and lower lips. If you can believe it, it's brighter blue than even a male Mountain Bluebird - and that's really blue!įrom head to the beginning of the blue tail, the skink's body has white stripes between broader dark brown to almost black body. Its four-inch body is covered with shiny glass-like scales, and the tail is the bluest blue you'll ever see. One look is all you need to recognize a juvenile Western Skink. Lifting the plywood so we could both see his prize more clearly, he said, "Now, what is it?" "It's over here, under this piece of plywood," he said, pointing toward the back of his house. Millard lives only a hop, skip, and a jump from me in Cascade Estates, so I grabbed up my camera and hustled over to his home. it's got the bluest tail I've ever seen!" "Jim!" he exclaimed, "You've got to come over and see this lizard. View their status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.Not too many years back, I received a phone call from an old pal, Millard Tope.There are no known major threats to western skinks and they are considered “least concern” due to their adaptability to a wide range of habitats, large distribution, and large stable populations.The tail will eventually grow back, but oftentimes the new tail is darker and more oddly shaped than the original. The bright blue tail then moves vigorously around, distracting the predator while the skink tries to escape. If caught by a predator, the western skink can detach its tail. The western skink is the only lizard in Washington that has a bright blue tail, shiny smooth scales, and stripes running along the length of their body. They lay 2 to 6 eggs, which will hatch in late summer.Between June and July, females dig a nest chamber a few centimeters deep in loose moist soil.Western skinks can eat a wide variety of foods, including crickets, beetles, flies, grasshoppers, spiders, and earthworms. ![]() They tend to avoid heavy brush and dense forests.Even though they can adapt to a wide variety of habitats, western skinks tend to live near water in dry open forests, shrub-steppe, and grassland.Western skinks can be found in eastern Washington, Idaho, from south-central British Columbia to southern Baja California, eastwards to western Montana, eastern Utah, north-central Arizona, and southern Nevada. ![]()
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