Yesterday was officially the first day of spring – I could have let you know yesterday, but it would have been very late yesterday (like an hour ago,) and only if I’d scrambled, which I wasn’t inclined to do. But regardless of equinoxes and calendars and whatever silly flower someone might prefer, we have the only dependable guide to the start of this season, to wit:
Yep, that’s the first green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) of the year on Walkabout Estates – one, mind you, that was not in the greenhouse or otherwise disturbed from its habitat, but had ventured out on its own from whatever faintly sandy locale it had overwintered within. Though I admit to editorializing with my choice of images, because it was largely looking alert and bright-eyed – I snagged this frame here as it closed its nictitating membrane (the third, clear eyelid) over its eye, possibly because it wasn’t too happy about the bright headlamp first damn thing in the season. Nonetheless, this is about right – it’s presently 15°c out there right now, having been a few degrees warmer during the day.
I took a look around for others, preferably one in a natural setting and not perched on the sun umbrella, but saw none. I did see a resident of the backyard pond, though that’s no big deal – they’re visible the moment it gets above, like, eight or ten degrees c.
This is likely the same juvenile American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) photographed earlier – see? And I saw another, smaller frog, that submerged before I could approach closely enough for a positive ID – it might have been another bullfrog, or more likely, it was a green frog, which are typical residents of the pond. I’ll keep trying, and keep you posted.
That water looks terrible, doesn’t it? I actually cleaned a lot of stuff out of the pond in the fall, but the winter deposited tons of junk into it, yet the algae bloom is relatively recent – perhaps the fault of the residents, perhaps not. We certainly had a hell of a lot of rain in the past couple of days and I would have expected a significant turnover of the water therein, yet here we are. Once it’s consistently warm enough that I’m not disturbing the frogs as they’re trying to semi-hibernate in the mud at the bottom, I’ll clean it out again.
And one more spring picture, which seems to be cheating a little but then again this is par for the course here.
This is the new growth erupting from one of the potted Japanese maples in the greenhouse, the same one seen here. I know what you’re saying, that it doesn’t count because it’s in the greenhouse, but this is where it always winters and so it remains a distinct harbinger of spring. There are other signs outside of the greenhouse, and I’ll be back within a few days to illustrate those – but these leaves look the coolest when they first open up.