Image Source: originally uploaded by gramarye, aka The Crotchety Gardener
This skink’s cousin just murdered a moth in my garden.
I’d never thought of them as especially effective predators, although I’ve certainly seem them fighting each other and even several large ones ganging up on a smaller one and then eating it.
But about half an hour ago I was idly sitting in my garden with a cuppa and I saw a moth flit onto a low plant. Something darted at it, and it immediately lifted up and attempted to escape. But its wing had been shredded on one side, and it could not sustain flight. The skink tracked its staggered flutterhops across my patch of pavers, and eventually when the exhausted moth landed on another low tussock of ornamental grass, the skink struck again, and this time there was no escape.
Gruesome, but fascinating.
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So does this mean that I can feel less guitly for depriving several skinks of their homes over the last week or so while I’ve been gardening? 😉
I have been persistently misreading this as “the shrink’s cousin.” I’ve seen tiny little skinks “hunt” (within their terrarium) and kill big fat crickets. I have a fondness for skinks, geckos, and the like, but I’d have a to have an herbivore, as I’m NOT having crickets all over the house, and although the skinks loved to get out of the terrarium and the crickets loved to get out of the terrarium, the skinks had no interest in broader cricket hunting.