A delicate skink taking in the sun on a straw broom. Photos: Ian Fraser.
I’ve written here before about blue-tongue lizards, which are regular visitors and residents in their gardens, as long as cats and dogs aren’t present.
However, there are also some smaller lizards which share our lives, especially in native gardens which provide enough shelter, though they can make do with non-native plantings if the shelter is there.
We have at least two such species in our yard, from two very different lizard families.
The geckoes are predominantly night lizards, with big bulbous eyes, soft skin with small scales and strong legs and toes. These toes often have complex patterns of tiny scales and sharp claws, which can grip the smoothest of surfaces, even glass.
They also enable geckoes to run up vertical surfaces and even hunt upside down by utilising tiny cracks and crevices in almost any surface.
Unfortunately the best-known Australian gecko, the common house gecko of the tropics and increasingly down the east coast as far as Sydney, is an introduced invasive species from southern Asia.
However, there are more than 180 recognised native gecko species in Australia and that number is rising all the time as new tools enable zoologists to distinguish between closely related species.
Most of them live in the tropics and deserts, but two are at home in the cold southern highlands which include Canberra.
To our pleasant surprise, we found that we’re sharing our garden with a small population of one of these species, the attractively patterned marbled gecko, which shelters by day under rocks and on one recent memorable occasion, inside a furled shade umbrella. We were both very surprised when I opened the umbrella! At night they hunt on the outside walls and doubtless also among the foliage.
Like some skinks, many geckoes can shed their big tails (providing half their body length) when attacked by predators. The twitching detached tail can help them escape by distracting the attacking bird or other foe, but it does set them back for the few months it takes the tail to regrow, as it is also an important store of energy reserves for the hard times, especially over winter.
A marbled gecko hunting insects by night.
Marbled geckoes lay just two soft eggs in autumn, attached to surfaces such as rock crevices and under tree bark. These hatch as soon as the temperatures start to rise again in spring.
Much more abundant here, both in the ACT lowlands and up in the mountains, are the skinks. There are well over 300 Australian species, some 30 of which live in the ACT. Most of these are small and quick, whisking over logs and rocks and between grass clumps, but there are some big exceptions, notably the blue-tongues and shinglebacks and the big rock-loving Cunningham’s skinks.
We have a healthy population of delicate (or grass) skinks in our yard, sunning themselves on pavers or rocks (and in one case on a straw broom by the back door) and skittering for cover when we get too close.
I’m pretty sure there are others too, but I’ve not yet confirmed that. The delicate skinks are recognised by their bronzy head and neck and no stripe along the spine. These characters distinguish them from the closely related garden (or grass again) skinks which are also commonly found in Canberra yards.
A copper-tailed skink sunning on a rock. The break of pattern in the tail suggests that it has shed part of its tail and regrown it.
The delicate skinks have a wide tolerance of habitats. They’re found locally from high in snow gum country to sheep paddocks around Canberra as well as in our gardens. They also live all along eastern Australia from tropical Queensland down to Tasmania, in a remarkable range of environments.
The females lay three or four small leathery eggs in a nest in the ground, but sometimes many females will lay in the same nest, resulting in a huge clutch of over 100 little eggs.
Another common skink in Canberra reserves, which can often be found in nearby gardens, is the distinctive copper-tailed skink, though the tail ranges from bright burnished copper to pale brown.
There could certainly be others in your yard too, especially if you’re near one of the Canberra Nature Park reserves. Keep your eyes out for them and be happy if you see them.
A city without wildlife is an impoverished place, but our region is far from that. I celebrate it.
Original Article published by Ian Fraser on Region Canberra.
