The video sorting continues apace – still a lot to go, but much more than that done. Still, we need another post, so we’ll check in on the new froglets appearing around Walkabout Estates now.
There have been a couple on the morning glories outside Deep 13 recently, so naturally I chose the smallest.
That’s enough for scale, right? We all know how big morning glory leaves are? No, I’m not leaving it at that, especially when this one was pretty cooperative.
At this age, the green treefrogs (Dryophytes cinereus) are somewhat mellow, and as long as you don’t move too quickly, you may convince them to clamber onto your finger. This one, in fact, needed a little convincing to get back off, having settled in nicely.
Another, roughly the same size, this time on The Girlfriend’s hand.
The lighting was better for this one, though I like the previous pose/composition better. You can tell these are different specimens by looking at the dark borders to the lateral white stripe.
Another about the same size, but this time a Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis) on the sweet potato vines out front.
Obviously a grey, and the Copes are the only variety we have around here. This was the first newly-untadpoled one I’d found, though I emptied quite a few tadpoles from the watering cans into the pond, since the idiot adults kept using them to deposit eggs within.
As soon as it starts getting dark, a few resident greens emerge from their daytime hiding spots around some of our windows and start hunting the insects that are attracted to the light, which means we often leave the lights on in two of the windows overnight, and the frog are certainly taking advantage because we can see them growing larger, not to mention the occasional capture in action (I need to try to get that on video, but the video light outside the window might draw the insects away from the glass.) Another tiny specimen paused on the glass while I had the camera in hand.
The windows are double-pane insulated glass, which produced a reflection of the froglet’s feet down below. On a neighboring pane, one of the largest adults I’ve seen was also hunting, so we have a size comparison, taken moments apart.
So there’s a direct comparison between being newly-emerged from the water, and how big they can actually get (which, granted, isn’t big – bullfrogs can get larger than my fist, and we have at least one such specimen down at the pond.)
Coming in from doing the partial lunar eclipse the other night, I had the camera and long lens in hand when I spotted a rare opportunity, this time on the kitchen window: two juvies in close proximity. I had to back off across the kitchen because that lens doesn’t focus within 2.5 meters, and then fire off the on-camera flash, and then adjust my angle to eliminate most of the bounceback from the glass and try again, but I did record them for posterity.
We’ve seen as many as five frogs hunting on this one window at once, three juvies and two adults, and given that the insects are horrendous out there and going out with the headlamp means dealing with a swarm, we’re happy to encourage their feeding. I’d carry a couple around with me if I thought I could train them for it.
[Seriously, I’ve actually gone out on the worst evenings wearing a mask to prevent inhaling any insects – it’s happened more than once, and one went so far up in my sinus that it couldn’t be sneezed or blown out, and had to be washed out with the neti pot. Rat bastard.]
And finally, one from last night, that I enlisted The Girlfriend’s help with.
Again on the morning glories, this one was a silvery color tinged with green, but if you look closely under the eye, you’ll see the vestige of a faint diagonal white stripe down to the mouth, a trait of the grey treefrogs – they haven’t developed much other distinguishing coloration at this age.
Oh, sorry, not the final one – I forgot I had a couple images that I never got around to posting, from a month ago, but they’re topical now. During one of the rainy periods, one large adult Copes grey was calling on a tree not far outside Deep 13, and I approached with the camera but figured the headlamp would alert it too much, preventing it from calling while I watched. Still, I got the throat partially inflated, which is how it sits between calls.
The Girlfriend and I were nearby while this one was bellowing out its desire for companionship, and soon located it. Amusingly, while it had paused its calling, The Girlfriend mimicked its call – and it responded in kind.
I wouldn’t have thought this would happen, given that neither of us can get particularly close to the sound of a grey treefrog, but they carried on a brief ‘conversation,’ so there was little doubt. Granted, it might have thought she was a competitor, albeit one with a speech impediment, but it worked either way.
These, by the way, sit as a precursor to some other pics that I have coming, so more are on the way. I’m endeavoring not to sidetrack myself too much or I’ll never finish the sorting.
