While grabbing something out of the yard tonight by the light of the headlamp, I happened to check out the backyard pond, because it’s reasonably warm and raining, which is usually enough to stir any resident frogs. And sure enough, at least one was sitting idly in the shallows, but another might have skipped into the water at my approach. So I went back inside and got the macro rig, for the first time since the butterfly house, and did just a pair of frames before the frog spooked and disappeared back under the surface.
It was as I was editing this frame just before uploading it here that I checked an assumed detail, which was missing, and realized I had a different species than I thought. Generally, it’s been a handful of green frogs (Lithobates clamitans) that have made this little pond their residence, but green frogs have a ‘vein’ ridge that runs from the crest of the head back towards the hips – this one only curls around the back side of the eardrum. That makes it an American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) instead, only a very small one, maybe about 50mm in body length – that’s smallish for a green frog, but quite small for a bullfrog, which can get to be the size of my fist (and you know how huge that is.)
This is part on an ongoing and curious saga. Some time last year, the green frogs seem to have vacated and a bullfrog, a big one (compare the pine straw,) moved in – I have not ruled out the bullfrog eating the greens. This remained the case for a few weeks I think, then the bullfrog was no longer able to be found, and this occurred quite close to the time that a red-shouldered hawk was hanging out suspiciously close to the backyard. They’re fond of frogs, and not in a decorative ceramics way, so I suspected that the bullfrog may have been consumed. I couldn’t recall if I had seen any new green frogs after that or not, and so I went back through the stock folders to check: nada. This might actually be the first frog that I’ve seen in the pond since the bullfrog left last September – it’s certainly the first I’ve photographed.
(If you’re thinking this might be one of the young-uns deposited in the pond by last year’s bullfrog, I’m going to burst that bubble; there would have been dozens to hundreds of tadpoles, probably far too many for a little pond liner, but I certainly would have seen evidence of them more than this, especially since I cleaned a lot of the debris out of the pond in October or so. I know it doesn’t look like I did here, but the winter deposited a buttload of stuff back into it.)
Anyway, I shot a picture! Yeah, it’s been that kind of season…