FIVE-LINED SKINKS

      To me, the adaptable, common five-lined skinks are the most beautiful lizards in the rocky-bottom woods of the eastern United States, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  I mostly see juvenile, blue-tailed skinks in crevices on cliffs and among rocks in locks of an abandoned canal along the Susquehanna River bordering Lancaster and York Counties.  But I see them only for a second because they are quick to scamper away and hide.         

     Juvenile skinks are particularly striking with their distinctive brown and yellow stripes that run lengthwise on top of them from nose to tail, and camouflages them.  And they have long, bright-blue tails that might attract the attentions of predators, who may attack those tails, breaking them off, while the young skinks get away to grow a new, but stunted, tail. 

     Five-lined skinks are diurnal, basking in the sunlight to warm up enough to hunt for a variety of invertebrates during the day.  And they are agile, and quick enough to catch those invertebrates, no problem.   

     But as these skinks mature and age to about six years old, their bold juvenile coloring fades.  Adult males even develop red-orange pigmentation on their heads, which help intimidate other mature males, and attract females to them for mating.

     Five-lined skinks, that mature at five to nine inches long, are part of several food chains of who eats whom.  The skinks ingest invertebrates around their rocky homes, and striped skunks, short-tailed shrews, broad-winged hawks and other predators consume the skinks they catch.  

     Five-lined skinks mate in the warmth of May.  And females lay about 16, one-half-inch eggs in a clutch in a small cavity between boulders, or under rocks and fallen logs on a woodland floor.  Mother skinks provide care for the eggs, and newborn babies, until they are old enough to fend for themselves. 

     Being cold-blooded, as all reptiles are, skinks hibernate through winter in shelters deeper than where they spent the summer hiding from predators and bad weather.  In April they emerge again to look for food and mates, probably in that order.  

     Five-lined skinks are common and interesting little lizards that are colorful as well.  They are neat to see in the wild, if for only a second.         

       

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