{"id":19649,"date":"2016-11-30T14:11:23","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T19:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=19649"},"modified":"2016-11-30T14:11:23","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T19:11:23","slug":"get-back-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2016\/11\/get-back-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"Get back, winter!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve had a couple of overnight frosts and some generally cool days, and I figured the treefrogs had packed it in for the winter, though the aquatic frogs in the backyard pond might still be sporadically active. Recently a warm front pushed in, bringing quite nice temperatures and a bit of rain, and last night I went out in just a t-shirt (well, okay, pants too) to take a peek in the backyard. As suspected, a couple of the green frogs (Lithobates clamitans<\/em>) were out of the pond and both resting, a few meters apart, on the lower crossbar of the fence.<\/p>\n

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Both of these are fairly good-sized for the species, so they’ve been doing well in the pond, and they’re far from the only residents – I’ve known of five at a time in there, and last night I saw four of them, one unidentified species being quite small. I was walking very slowly and carefully because the yard is littered with leaves and spotting frogs in those conditions is extremely difficult.<\/p>\n

But they weren’t the only frogs to be found, and the next ones surprised me.<\/p>\n

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My count for last night was six green treefrogs (Hyla cinerea<\/em>,) of different sizes, all in the backyard. I’d been hoping, only a few months ago, to get some established in the yard, but this was more than expected, especially since they’ve outnumbered the Copes grey treefrogs at the best of times.<\/p>\n

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When I first saw this one, on my way back in to get the camera, it was tightrope-walking up the black pole you see here, a peculiar sight since their legs are twice as long as they normally appear, splayed out awkwardly to either side. I will get an illustrating shot of it one of these days, but for now we have the typical perches.<\/p>\n

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I spotted this one from across the yard as I was photographing the previous – that bright hue certainly stood out against the gardenia leaves. This was also noticeably the biggest.<\/p>\n

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You’ve seen a variation<\/a> of this perspective before, and it’s possible this is the same frog, but it’s a different downspout. This one was the most difficult to photograph, since the space between the nearby rain barrel and the porch supports was very narrow, and I simply couldn’t work a better angle with the flash unit. This was also the only one to be found at midday today, right before I typed this.<\/p>\n

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This was actually the first I’d spotted, the one that made me head back to get the camera, and I found three more in that short trip. The blue ‘pole’ is actually a standard network cable, the kind you plug into the back of your computer, or at least did – now everyone uses their smutphones, it seems. but yeah, tiny. In fact, here’s another shot to show scale:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Yep, able to fit comfortably on the pad of my middle finger, though I doubt it would have stayed put for those shenanigans.<\/p>\n

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This was the last, about the same size as the previous one and hanging on a dried stem in the garden. The warm rain really made them active last night, and might again tonight – who knows? But I’m pleased to see them again when the shooting season is winding down for the winter.<\/p>\n

And to close, we return to the first treefrog in the gallery which, while I was shooting the others, crossed the upper deck to sit on the edge of the window and peer into the screened porch like a slimy green voyeur. I said<\/em> I was wearing pants, so I can’t tell you what was motivating this one, and let you speculate on your own.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve had a couple of overnight frosts and some generally cool days, and I figured the treefrogs had packed it in for the winter, though the aquatic frogs in the backyard pond might still be sporadically active. Recently a warm front pushed in, bringing quite nice temperatures and a bit of rain, and last night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[965,2505,2506,2907,3629,3628],"class_list":["post-19649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-green-frog","tag-green-treefrog","tag-hyla-cinerea","tag-lithobates-clamitans","tag-the-invasion-will-be-photographed","tag-warm-rains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}