Discovered Something Cool - Nest Site

[Nero Egernia]

Was searching under planks of wood in the garden looking for slugs and this is what I found . . .



The egg shells were soft and I'm almost certain that this appears to be some kind of communal nesting site for the resident skinks. The eggs were simply piled on top of each other, although some were actually buried. If you look closely you can see the remains of a dead skink, inside her decaying body (which was buried under the eggs in the picture) were some equally decayed eggs. It appears that the many eggs surrounding her were at different stages in incubation. After having a sticky beak I carefully placed the plank of wood back in place.

I'm not sure what species they are as the skinks are fairly timid and very fast when dashing for cover. Most of the time I just hear their tell tale rustling retreat for cover.

 

[Nero Egernia]

A few days ago I began to notice some very tiny skinks rustling about in the leaf litter. I suspect that these guys had come from the nest that I discovered a month or so ago. They were not as timid as the adult skinks and so I was able to film them. Hopefully they grow and thrive, and don't fall prey to predators.

Can anyone identify the skinks? At first I thought they were offspring of Morethia obscura but they were able to blink, so I'm a little stumped.

Bonus quiz!

Within the film there were two different species of birds calling. Can you identify them?

 

[Callum Dureau]

Pretty sure they are pale flecked garden skinks aka common garden skink, Lampropholis guichenoti

 

[pinefamily]

Can't help you, Oshkii, sorry. Still trying to ID the skinks we have running around our place.