A first time experience with a Blue Tongue Shingle back or Bob Tail skink rewrites most of the common expectations of reptiles. For gardeners they are welcome in my garden anytime as they eat slugs snails and insects, but last year I found one trying to climb a tomato plant to eat cherry tomatoes. I’m quite happy for him to eat the windfalls in return for his work eating all the gastropods, but most of the time they just seem to sleep!
I photographed this one in W.A. with a Canon AE1 and a 100mm lens. He was atop of a retaining wall, so just a bit below my eye level. Like many other creatures surprised at meeting a human he made a definite hiss and I could see the full extent of his colourful gob and for his size a cavernous throat… Then I caught a whiff of his terrible breath!