Monday 2 February 2015

Baby blue

Working in the orchard today with the line trimmer cleaning up around the trees and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a wriggling movement and saw a small lizard. Stopped work and checked out the lizard to make sure it hadn't been hit by the line. I was surprised to see that it was a baby Eastern Blue Tongue Lizard Tillqua scinocides. 

 
Adult Eastern Blue Tongue Lizards can grow to 600mm and are the largest of Australian skinks, however this little one was about 130mm which is about their birth length. The female gives birth to live young, with a litter averaging around 10 individuals.
I moved this little one to an area in the rocks around our pool where it would be less likely to get hit by our mower or line trimmer. It was quite feisty showing its tongue and wide open mouth in display, but hard to get a photo as it did not want to stay still when trying to look tough. I did manage to get one photo with the tongue out but blue colour doesn't show very well.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment