{"id":42361,"date":"2026-08-11T12:37:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T16:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=42361"},"modified":"2026-08-11T12:37:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T16:37:28","slug":"leetle-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/08\/leetle-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Leetle ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

A small (heh!<\/em>) collection of diminutive critters from the environs, the past several days.<\/p>\n

Checking out the diamond spire gardenias one night as they had started blooming again, I saw a little knot around one leaf cluster, almost but not quite appearing as fallen leaves.<\/p>\n

\"brown
Yes, this is a reasonable illustration of scale – gardenia leaves and flowers aren’t that big, the leaves usually 25-35mm across. I was just a little surprised to find this guy sleeping off of the ground like this, rather than tucked into a burrow or cluster of dead leaves as I would have thought.<\/p>\n

\"brown
Trying to get a decent view was challenging, since other ‘trunks’ of the gardenia were in the way and I was trying not to disturb the plant too much to avoid spooking my subject off. The size, the spots along the sides, and the rough, keeled scales identify this as a brown snake (Storeria dekayi<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\"brown
I finally got down to have a view of the head, shooting in between the ‘trunks.’ Smaller than a pencil in diameter, this is about average size for the species, maybe a wee bit smaller. Overall length perhaps around 200mm, but that’s just guessing.<\/p>\n

On the same plant, over a week later, we had a different guest spending the night.<\/p>\n

\"head
This was undoubtedly a newborn Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis<\/em>,) except I’ve never seen one emerge from an egg yet and don’t know if they immediately start running around on plants or spend some period of time hiding within leaf litter;<\/strong> it was the smallest I think I’ve seen, anyway, and I endeavored to illustrate this.<\/p>\n

\"newborn
It started getting a little bit antsy as I was sliding the millimeter scale into the frame, and there was only so close I could get it, but I think this effectively illustrates that the head is 4mm wide or less.<\/p>\n

When it shifted position, I also shifted the scale, slightly more illustrative.<\/p>\n

\"newborn
The scale is propped between leaves, underneath the anole but closer to us, so it actually appears slightly larger than it would had it been lined up alongside. While doing all this, I managed to peg an overall length of 50mm, but with anoles, half of that (or better) is tail alone, this one tapering down to a tiny thread. It could easily have stretched along my middle finger, and been completely hidden when I turned my hand over.<\/p>\n

\"newborn
Despite the closed eyes in the previous pic, the anole was still antsy – they do this a lot, and I don’t understand it, but even when alerted to potential danger, in only moments they’ll close their eyes and appear to drop into a catnap;<\/strong> I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t a camouflage reflex, hiding the dark contrast of their eyes from predators. You’d think they would evolve eye color more in line with their bodies, if that were the case…<\/p>\n

Anyway, this one was still slinking carefully around on the leaves, unsure if it should flee – this is all by night and illuminated by the headlamp (or the camera flash during the pics,) so it probably couldn’t see that well, though the millimeter scale certainly slid into the same light and was likely in view. We’ll go in closer on this frame for the detail – anoles have great scales.<\/p>\n

\"inset
Length (not width) of the head here, perhaps 7mm – that’s the width of a pencil. I would have liked to have coaxed it onto my hand for better scale, but it was clear the anole wouldn’t have taken well to this and I probably would have achieved nothing, especially since the camera with the 180mm and flash\/softbox is heavy, not easily handled in one hand. I need an assistant more often. Though I did have one for the next.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
Not newborn, per se, but newly emerged from the water and its tadpole stage, this green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus<\/em>) was also quite small. I later went out and measured the fence slat that it’s on, which is 20mm in width. This time, though, The Girlfriend was handy, and she didn’t mind holding the frog for a different scale shot, even though she was worried that it’d leap away. The frog was more cooperative than anticipated, though.<\/p>\n

\"diminutive
There’s always a certain level of amusement to such sessions, since she’s always urging me to hurry up, “It’s going to jump away!”, like I’m not already aware of this. What, they jump<\/em>? This one, however, settled in nicely and actually had to be coaxed back out<\/em> of her hand. Would that all my subjects be this willing…<\/p>\n

[Look, I know that’s acceptable sentence structure, and has been used countless times before in great literary works and all that, but it really doesn’t make sense by any rules of English, does it? This may be the last I’ll ever use such a thing.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A small (heh!) collection of diminutive critters from the environs, the past several days. Checking out the diamond spire gardenias one night as they had started blooming again, I saw a little knot around one leaf cluster, almost but not quite appearing as fallen leaves. Yes, this is a reasonable illustration of scale – gardenia […]<\/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":[531,1682,4081,6874,6854,7684,6875,2505,471],"class_list":["post-42361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-anolis-carolinensis","tag-brown-snake","tag-carolina-anole","tag-diamond-spire-gardenia","tag-dryophytes-cinereus","tag-eentsy","tag-gardenia-hybrid-leefive-ppip","tag-green-treefrog","tag-storeria-dekayi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42361","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=42361"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42374,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42361\/revisions\/42374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}