I go through the winter struggling to find things to post, with virtually nothing to photograph, and then when spring arrives and I actually have a small lineup of recent photos, I’m busy messing with other projects. Go fig.
No, it’s not that bad – most of these are, what, two days old? But yeah, they could have been up a little sooner.
We had another spate of warm weather, including overnight, which certainly is enough to get one’s hopes up, yet there is a frost warning for the next two nights, so I’m still not going to plant anything yet, and the treefrogs are probably getting sick of this shit and preparing to move to Florida, after getting so well established at Walkabout Estates too. Can’t say that I blame them.
After one warm night, they could easily be found in various locations during the following day, loathe to go secrete themselves anywhere.
This particular green treefrog (Hyla cinerea,) sporting a fashionable bronze hue, might have been kinda forced to be out, since the Japanese maple that it’s napping within had been removed from the greenhouse the day before, and the frog might have been tucked into the mulch in the pot. There were plenty of others around the yards, though, so I’m not ready to take blame just yet. Later that evening as the nocturnal treefrogs began to get active, we have an entirely different pose (and pupil dilation, for that matter) from the same specimen.
This one is kinda of revisiting two previous images, the one found here and of course the gallery photo, though neither one of them has that distracting twig in the background. Aren’t I supposed to be advancing my skills?
Even if it had been removed from the greenhouse, there were/are still more in there, evident as night fell. I left the door open for a little while that night in case they decided they wanted out, but really, they’re better off within as long as their metabolism remains slower – there are few bugs for food, but the heater will keep the temperature from dropping too low until we’re quite sure the frosts have ceased for the season.
There were quite a few more out in various locations, most of which I’ll spare you because, seriously, I think there’s a few hundred images of green treefrogs in previous posts, and now I should concentrate on getting more behavioral photos (though I haven’t avoided these, I just haven’t witnessed much at all.) But we’ll do the slightly fartsy stuff for a moment.
This little juvenile posed reluctantly for me when I first ventured out, perched on the edge of a planter on the back deck, but when I came back around it had moved into a more camouflaging position and I used the leaf (I think it’s a tulip) for more of an indication of depth and scale. Body length maybe 30mm or so.
Another, not too far away, was not blending in at all on a piece of decorative driftwood.
I’m a little torn on this one, as to whether it should go vertically like this or horizontal. The actual position was mostly diagonal, and I was far from shooting in any kind of ‘normal’ position to get this, so anything goes at this point. If you want an accurate effect, push your monitor off your desk (don’t be lookin’ at this site with no damn phones,) and lean over it bent almost double and cock your head at an odd angle. If the monitor landed mostly face-up then you’re close.
Anyway, I have two other subjects that’ll be along shortly, in case you’re weird and don’t like treefrogs, though why I should cater to you in such a case is beyond me.