Garden Skink

Latin Name: Lampropholis guichenoti ("Guichenot's shining-scale", after A. Guichenot)

Class:Reptilia    Order:Squamata-Sauria    Family:Scincidae    Genus:Lampropholis.

Distribution: 100,000-300,000 square kilometres in eastern Australia, as far west as
                      Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. The Garden Skink is common in suburban
                      gardens of the eastern capital cities and parks including Bushy Park Wetlands.

Habitat: Sclerophyll woodlands, open forests and moist tussock grasslands, especially at the
               edges of vegetation that are not fire-prone. (e.g. moister situations or isolated shrubs
               or grasses).

Description: Small, stout-bodied skink, with glossy scales and often with a coppery sheen
                     on the head and forebody. Its back is greyish-brown with scattered small dark
                     flecks and quite prominent large pale flecks. There is a distinctly dark upper
                     lateral coloration, bordered above by pale dorsal coloration which gradually
                     darkens towards the mid-line.

Length:  Head and Body Length to 4cm, Total Overall Length to 9cm.

Garden Skink

Food: Also known as the Common Grass Skink, it forages in low vegetation, grass and
           leaf litter for spiders, beetles, ants, bugs, cockroaches, flies, mites, termites,
           grasshoppers and slaters.

Breeding: Mating occurs in spring and between two and six eggs per clutch are laid from
                  late spring to late summer. Females may produce a second smaller clutch.  
                  Hatchlings emerge from mid-summer until mid-autumn and mature in 8 to 9
                  months.

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