This observation comes to us from Annika Lindqvist. These attractive lizards are known as Broad-headed Skinks. This is a male and a female. The male is the skink with the bright red head. Annika found this pair at White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas.

Broad-headed Skink - Courting

Broad-headed Skink - Courting

Broad-headed Skink - Courting

5 Replies to “Broad-headed Skink – Courting”

  1. This website is wonderful and helps get the message out that our cities (and the rest of our state) are home to a wonderful array of wildlife… especially when we develop the landscape in a sensitive way that makes use of native plants, etc.

    I am the Program Director for the Wildlife Diversity Program at Tx Parks and Wildlife and love to see efforts like this one! As I perused the sghitings, I couldn’t help but think how valuable these sightings would be if they were entered into one of the central databases we use to monitor species diversity across the state and/or the nation. We have several ways set up for individuals to log in their sightings and have them contribute to the larger, central repository of observation data. This particular species siting would be great for our iNaturalist – Herps of Texas database project. Other species would be perfect for other databases.

    If you’d like to send me an email to begin a conversation about ways to funnel sightings into these efforts, I’d love to hear from you!
    Keep up the great and enthusiastic work! – John Davis

  2. I love this site. I look at this site at least once a week. Looking at the pictures I see the female has lost part of its tail at some point in her life. It probably saved her life.

  3. I would be interested to know what makes this a broad-headed skink, and not a five-lined skink. The female seems to have distinct stripes, and even the male has more than hints of stripes. And male five-lined skinks seem to get this sort of reddish head as well. What am I missing? Conant and Collins seem to make separating these two a matter of scale patterns.I’d be glad for the help.

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