Skink

We all appreciate the expertise of all the Rangers. But most of us are very amateur with this and giving it our best shot, then hope if we screw up you are there to correct us.....seems it will be an ongoing mission you accepted as most of us posting are just happy novices.

Thanks Ashley

It just gets frustrating to have to constantly explain the skink ID to people over and over when it is something you can read a few internet pages and find out! There are many cases where several species of herps are nearly identical, not always as easy to ID as it may seem!

James, the ID suggestion is not correct so I hope you do not accept it. It's best to do all your research when trying to ID a species if you don't know much about it, Karen. If you had looked more into it, you would see that the broadhead skink, five-lined skink, and southeastern five-lined skink are all nearly identical in appearance. With some further research, you would have seen that the broadhead skink can be separated out from the other two by having 5 upper labial scales while the other two species have 4 upper labial scales. This skink has 4 upper labials. The only way to tell the five-lined from southeastern five-lined is to examine the scales underneath the tail, which you have to catch the lizard to do. So from these photos, there is no way to tell if this is the southeastern five-lined or the five-lined, making Karen's suggestion incorrect. Best to leave it at "skink" and "Plestiodon sp" as the ID.

Ooops... make that "SOUTHeastern..."

Hah! I think I may have found him. Looks to be a very handsome male "Eastern 5-lined Skink". Love his red face! Aside from the link given in the ID, here's a nice pic from Wikipedia (which I avoid for official ID...but nice for back-up purposes.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeaste...

I THINK this may be a kind of skink. I'll see what I can find. Sure is pretty!