Gotta bunch this time around, and it’s going to be herp-heavy, which means we’re classing together species that barely have any relation to one another scientifically, but they seem kind of the same; this means frogs, lizards, and turtles. We’ll try to space them out a bit.
This one should have been in the last post, but I forgot about it until I’d already posted and didn’t feel like going back to edit.
Another newborn Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) sleeping on the Japanese maple, but the light angle was hardly flattering and it looks barely this side of starving. In my experience, they often look like this soon after hatching (or first appearing in public, anyway,) but they rally quickly. The white around the eyes and chin also indicates that this one was beginning to molt, which only added to the decrepit appearance. You get the impression the twig that it clutches is providing the bare amount of warmth that the lizard possesses – or at least, you do now.
I should have included this one with the post at the time that it was taken, but one of the nutria provided a nice head-on portrait showing the orange teeth and that Lorax mustache. The orange is confined solely to the front surfaces, by the way, and is the hardest portion of the teeth, allowing them to wear down into chisel shapes as the softer enamel behind it grinds down faster.
Don’t know how I missed this on the initial unloading, but this anole seems to be sporting an ostentatious engagement ring, or maybe some kind of foot piercing. Note that very little dew is visible anywhere else, on the lizard or the leaves, so it obtained this droplet from some obscure nook. Is Sauron looking back at us?
[Makes me wonder if Sauron could actually look away from the Palantirs, or if he was forced to see what they displayed. If so, you could have a world of fun setting up things to unveil to him.
“Hey, Saurpuss, lookit this!”
“Gauggh! You filthy bastard hobbits!”
Come to think of it, this may explain a lot…]
So, the sex life of gastropods is quite funky, with different species engaging in it differently. While leopard slugs simply wrap genitals, others actually launch a small dart from their bodies, attached to a membrane or mucus ‘line,’ and reel one another in (most species are hermaphroditic, to make things even more interesting.) But finding two of them in close proximity at least suggested that this is what I was witnessing. And then we go in closer:
Not only is there a third, much smaller one in the middle there, but there is a line visibly connecting the two larger ones. So, was this what was happening? I have nothing further since there was no movement at all as I watched and I had other reasons not to stick around observing.. Not that anyone really needs a reason regardless.
Early one morning, a juvenile green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) was perched on the almond tree, peeking up from its nook in the folded leaves, and so I got a little fartsy with it. I had the opportunity for several different approaches and poses. while the frog viewed my presence with a little anxiety and shifted around a bit.
A close crop of this one showed the dew adhering to the undersides of the leaf, though it was on top too. Plus we can see from the shadow that the frog is flashing us the peace sign, which doesn’t seem to fit the discomfort displayed, but perhaps this means something entirely different to treefrogs…
Still being fartsy now, but back to the anoles. The composition was entirely up to the anole, perching on the leaf of a hairy-stem spiderwort (Tradescantia hirsuticaulis) – the little touch of blue from the flower bud helps. Now if the lizard had only kept its tail straight, it would have been perfect. Well, okay, there’s no such thing, but better, anyway.
[Since I routinely see anoles clinging in precarious positions while fast asleep, I have to assume that their muscles lock into place during unconsciousness, which seems odd at first, but how many species actually go as limp as we do? It might even be that there’s no such thing as ‘relaxed’ muscles to them, and the muscles must be told by the brain to move, otherwise they’re ‘locked.’ Hmmm…]
While we’re being fartsy…
I saw orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) in the yard last year but didn’t take advantage of it, so I’m making up for it as we enter flowering season again for the species. I’ve seen several different plants that sport dewdrops right on the leap tips or, as here, at specific points, but I’m not even sure this is dew – perhaps it’s simply exuded by the leaves themselves? There’s probably a botanical term for this behavior, but I’m not looking it up. You’ll notice that the trumpet/cone shape of the blossom isn’t a continuation of the stem like most flowers, but hangs from it supported in the middle. Weird.
Back to the anoles and their muscle control…
Easy to see that the hindlegs are doing the work, but this one didn’t even bother with one foreleg, leaving it just hanging in space. We need a better angle:
I had to go with a different angle to get adequate flash illumination, and honestly, I can’t recall which orientation the anole had chosen – I think this is the most accurate. And that foreleg is just sticking out there.
As spring foliage kicked back in, the turtles lost a lot of the perches that they used to sun themselves upon, but three yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) were making the most of this snag. You can see that the duckweed has completely taken over the pond, but there’s a small advantage to this too: it doesn’t flow right back into place quickly at all, so it leaves paths through the water when it’s disturbed, cluing me in as to who’s been visiting and where they’ve been going.
This cute juvenile green treefrog is perched on the leaf of a bullrush, to provide a little scale, but what it’s observing overhead was lost to me; it might simply be peeing discreetly I guess. The angle and flash show off the translucent skin well though.
And finally,
Back on the morning that I was chasing pics of fish jumping, I mistimed this one, which is a shame because it was reasonably close and focus was bang-on. But the splash looked nice, and closes out the collection on another fartsy note. Not a pleasant note, perhaps, or a skilled one, but a note – we’ll leave it at that.