A close encounter with Yakka Skink (Erernia rugosa) at Mt Glorious near Brisbane.

This posting is for any of you who are also into herpetology. I was birding along Browns Road, Mt Glorious when I came across a very large lizard sunning itself in the middle of the road. Looking at it through the bins from a distance, I thought it was an aberrantly coloured Blue Tongue. I was able to get a few feet from it. It was big, huge in fact – certainly bigger than any of the Blue Tongues we get around here. Uniformly dark charcoal grey/ brown on the ventral surface and brown / dark cream below, with no banding noted. Body robust with a thick icecream cone-shaped tail – that’s the best I can describe it. The thing that struck me the most though was the size of all 4 legs which were very large and muscular.

As a) it was sitting in the middle of the road and b) because Gavin was about to come round the corner in the car and c) he had a camera, I decided to try and catch it. Almost caught it – got onto the tail, but it wiggled free and got under a large tree trunk.

Habits are poorly known and although habitat does not add up “usually found in dry open schlerophyll forest” according to Cogger, I am as certain as I can be of the ID and would appreciate comments (or rebuttals with other alternative IDs).

On the birding side of things, just before seeing the skink I was lucky enough to watch a Russet-tailed Thrush foraging and then take the results of said forage to a single young bird, which had been making a contact call throughout the time it was separated from the parent bird. Great to see!

Kind regards

Judith

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