Cunningham’s Skink (Egernia
cunninghamii) is another fairly large lizard that calls Yallaroo home.
This species reaches a length of about 20 centimetres from snout to tail and
has a grey-brown body. Body colour is variable and may differ throughout its
range, which is on the slopes and ranges of Eastern Australia. The species
usually lives in rock crevices or under rock slabs. At Yallaroo they prefer to
live around the house. One specimen lives on and under our front verandah and
another occupies a gap under our back steps.
We found strange droppings on the front verandah.
They were a couple of centimetres long with small bumps like a necklace. After
dissection the bumps turned out to be the seeds of Myoporum parvifolium.
The fruits, of this ground-covering native have a sweet fleshy coat
surrounding a hard seed. The droppings were produced by our skinks that have
acquired a taste for the sweet fruit. Mother Nature has some unusual methods
of seed dispersal. The skinks share this food with Crimson Rosellas.