Harmless · Native to the United States

Common five-lined skink

Plestiodon fasciatus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Also called blue-tailed skink
Data updated October 2026

Young common five-lined skink on a log, black with five yellow stripes and a bright blue tail
Fig. 1 — A young skink: black with five pale stripes and a bright blue tail.
Adult male common five-lined skink with faded stripes and an orange-red head
Fig. 2 — Adult males fade to olive or tan, and the head turns orange-red in the breeding season.

At a glance

A small, shiny lizard of eastern woodlands, rock piles and woodpiles. The young have a bright blue tail that breaks off to distract predators. It is harmless to people and one of the most often seen lizards in much of the East.

01

Identification

A smooth, shiny lizard with short legs and small, glossy scales. Its colors change with age. Hatchlings and young are black with five yellow or whitish stripes and a bright blue tail. Females keep a brown body, a dark side band and tan stripes, and the blue tail fades with age. Adult males turn a fairly plain olive or tan, lose most of their stripes, and develop an orange-red head and jaws in spring.

  1. 01Five stripes. Two pale stripes on each side and one down the middle of the back, clearest in young lizards and females.
  2. 02Blue tail in the young. Bright blue on juveniles, fading to gray-brown as they mature.
  3. 03Red-headed males. Breeding males have an orange-red head. Close relatives look very similar and are told apart mainly by the scales on the lip.

Two close relatives in the Southeast, the southeastern five-lined skink and the broad-headed skink, are hard to separate from this species without counting the scales along the upper lip. Broad-headed skinks usually grow larger.

02

Size

01 ft2 ft Adults · 5–8½ in (13–22 cm), tail included 5 in

Adults measure about 5 to 8½ inches (13–22 cm) from snout to tail tip, and more than half of that is tail. Males are slightly larger than females. The body alone, without the tail, rarely exceeds about 3¼ inches. Hatchlings are only about 2.4 inches (6 cm) long.

03

Range & habitat

Common five-lined skink basking on a rotting log at a woodland edge
Fig. 3 — Rotting logs, stumps and loose rock are the cover this skink depends on.

The common five-lined skink’s range closely follows the eastern deciduous forest. It runs from western Connecticut and Vermont south to northern Florida, and west to Wisconsin, eastern Kansas, Oklahoma and eastern Texas, with isolated populations in Iowa, Minnesota and western Wisconsin and a few in southern Ontario. It favors moist woods with plenty of fallen trees and stumps, wooded river margins, rocky hillsides and open ledges. It also lives around people, in rock gardens, firewood piles, farm buildings and on patios.

04

Diet & predators

Five-lined skinks are active hunters that search leaf litter, logs and tree trunks for food. They eat only animals, mostly insects and spiders: crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, ants, flies and grubs, plus snails and sometimes smaller lizards, including young skinks.

Feeds on

  • Crickets and grasshoppers
  • Beetles, ants and grubs
  • Spiders
  • Snails and small lizards

Preyed on by

Field cricket on bare ground
Prey — crickets.
Virginia opossum close-up
Predator — Virginia opossum.

05

Behavior & seasons

These skinks spend much of the day under logs, bark and rocks, coming out to bask on sunny logs and stones. They live mostly on the ground but climb dead trees to hunt or escape, and will even enter water to hide. When grabbed, a skink sheds its tail, which keeps wriggling and holds a predator’s attention while the lizard runs. The tail regrows shorter and duller. During the breeding season males defend territories and fight one another.

They are active from about March or April through October, with a peak in spring, and may come out on unusually warm winter days. Winter is spent alone or in small groups in rotting logs, under large rocks or underground below the frost line. Young skinks tend to emerge earlier in spring and go into hibernation later than adults.

06

Reproduction

Mating takes place in spring, and females lay one clutch a year, mostly from late spring into early July. The nest is a cavity in a rotting log, a stump, leaf litter or loose soil under a rock. Clutches usually hold about 4 to 14 eggs, with larger counts reported in some areas. Unusually for a lizard, the female stays with her eggs until they hatch, about one to two months later, and eats any that spoil. She leaves soon after hatching, and the young are on their own.

07

Conservation

The species is not federally listed and is common across most of its range; in Missouri it is one of the most abundant lizards. At the northeastern edge of its range it is rare: it is listed as threatened in Connecticut, where it is the only native lizard. In Canada, the Carolinian population in southwestern Ontario is listed as endangered and the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence population as special concern. Habitat loss, removal of logs and rocks used for cover, road deaths, collecting and predation by pets and raccoons are the main local threats.

Keep reading

Sources

Data updated October 2026 · How we build these pages