{"id":42903,"date":"2026-10-31T23:57:59","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T03:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=42903"},"modified":"2026-11-01T00:04:38","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:04:38","slug":"frog-closeout-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/10\/frog-closeout-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"Frog closeout sale!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve collected a few too many frogs, so I’m slashing prices and passing the savings on to you. Let’s see if I can complete this before October really and truly has left.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
Back on the 10th<\/sup>, I found this little spud sitting on the decorative sweet potato plants alongside the front door, slightly larger than a thumbnail. It behaved well enough to allow me to come in close and do some detail images, but first, the view as originally found.<\/p>\n

\"dorsal
It would be easy to say, “That’s a green treefrog,” and you’d be technically correct, while at the same time completely misleading. A close crop of the former image helps us with a particular telltale trait, though.<\/p>\n

\"close
What we’re looking for here is that pale patch under the eye, delineated by a darker stripe behind it, but also the striped patches along the hind legs give a good indication too. Those, especially the eye patch, are all traits of the Copes grey treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis<\/em>,) so while you were correct in saying it was a green treefrog, seeing that it’s a treefrog and it’s mostly green, it’s not the species commonly known as the green treefrog, and thus you’d also be wrong. The juvies sport a lot of green skin until they reach a certain age, though I don’t know exactly what that age is, but it’s been a source of uncertainty before.<\/p>\n

Now, the common grey treefrog also looks exactly like this, and they’re next to impossible to tell apart from the Copes, except for the call, but it also seems we have nothing but the Copes in the area (in fact, all of NC according to sources,) so I’m comfortable with this identification.<\/p>\n

Several of the true green treefrogs (Dryophytes cinereus<\/em>) have been using the windows in the kitchen and the breakfast nook as their hunting grounds at night, so we often leave the lights on for them – not that they’re afraid of the dark, but the moths apparently are, when by all rights they should be much more afraid of the treefrogs. When the overnight temperatures dropped, the frogs disappeared, but came back very quickly as soon as it wasn’t that<\/em> cold, especially when rain was threatening. I took the opportunity to snag one the other night.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
They will sit like this, practically suction-cupped to the glass, but should a moth appear nearby (which happens frequently,) they demonstrate that they were paying close attention and start stalking them – we’ve witnessed several captures, which one day I will get on video, but arranging that with adequate lighting will be tricky. This, of course, is done with a flash, and I even backed off to create more of a tableau.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
There- we even have a ghost for Halloween. A double one. With the gold rings of its headlamp faintly visible too – talk about a detailed apparition!<\/p>\n

I have been unsuccessful in snagging a daytime photo of one of the greens sleeping deep in the crook of the elephant ear stalks, which vaguely resemble the way palm fronds grow, but I did capture one after nightfall when it had ventured back out again. This was quite chilly and I was a little surprised to see an active frog, but here we are.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
I had to play around with the perspective and do something<\/em> with it, since I had (so far) failed to snag it tucked deep into the grooves of the stalk. You can’t tell from this angle, but the stalks grow in more of a “U” cross-section, funneling rain down into the base of the plant where it can pool for days, and so the treefrogs consider this a nice moist clubhouse, well protected from even nature photographers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the ginger lilies (Hedychium coronarium<\/em>) have been re-blooming, a little surprising considering that many plants are dropping leaves or at least turning autumn colors, and last night when we distributed corn, I found frogs on two of the plants, right alongside the blossoms;<\/strong> apparently they also know that moths are attracted to the scent of the flowers, which really is quite pleasant. Naturally, I returned with the camera in hand a little later on.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
The flowers don’t last long and droop, wilted, after only a day or so, which didn’t help the aesthetics of the shot very much. Nor did the frog turd this little guy had deposited right behind it on the leaf, but at least that<\/em>, I could carefully snake my pocket knife blade in and scoop it out of the frame. I made the attempt on that tan thing too, but it was tangled with some webbing and I was already in danger of spooking off the frog. Better luck next time.<\/p>\n

At least I got this one – the other frog on a neighboring plant had scampered off in the interim, so I simply concentrated on the better-looking flowers instead.<\/p>\n

\"ginger
They really are blooming enthusiastically, which is good to see – perhaps we’ll have a small grove of them in a few years. This is alongside the midyard pond we call the Puddle, a good place for them.<\/p>\n

I returned the next night, which is actually tonight, and had better luck on this same one, at least.<\/p>\n

\"juvenile
It’s there – look closely. Definitely relying on its camouflage this time, which works quite well – just a tad too yellow. They need to work on this. But we’ll go in for a better look.<\/p>\n

\"closer
All of these were juveniles, by the way, these last two being roughly half of full adult size. Can’t imagine they were finding a lot to eat, but they seemed to know what temperatures would work and what wouldn’t, so we’ll trust their judgement.<\/p>\n

There – squeezed them out. All typos that this produced were intended and should be considered artistic license. And now into November – remember to reset your camera clocks too, if you’re in an area that still participates in this asinine Daylight Saving Horseshit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve collected a few too many frogs, so I’m slashing prices and passing the savings on to you. Let’s see if I can complete this before October really and truly has left. Back on the 10th, I found this little spud sitting on the decorative sweet potato plants alongside the front door, slightly larger than […]<\/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":[2439,6903,6854,7838,6764,2505,8864],"class_list":["post-42903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-copes-grey-treefrog","tag-dryophytes-chrysoscelis","tag-dryophytes-cinereus","tag-elephant-ear","tag-ginger-lily","tag-green-treefrog","tag-hedychium-coronarium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42903","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=42903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42914,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42903\/revisions\/42914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}