froggy weather

•



The spring peepers and chorus frogs have been crooning at the nature center for several weeks, but yesterday's mild temperatures brought out some of the larger herps: green frogs and bullfrogs. (The one in the photo is very young. I think I can make out slight dorsal ridges, so I suspect it's an immature green frog.)

Neither are calling yet. But that's just only a matter of time.

- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center

•

rana

•

The American green frogs (Rana clamitans), also known as bronze frogs in some locales, (green to bronze to brown, their color really varies) are beginning to make their presence known in the Ijams’ Plaza Pond. Their call has been likened to the plucking of a loose banjo string: "boooonk."

A single female (the one in my photo is a male) can produce between 1000 and 7000 eggs. Can you imagine that? If they all survived, the pond would be hip-deep in green frogs. But, like yesterday's tent caterpillars, only enough survive to maintain a healthy population. The rest are gobbled up by hungry mouths.

And, there's a lot of hungry mouths out there.

•

wayward

This one falls under the category of “If you build it, they will come.”

I created a very small pool under the drip, drip, drip of the air conditioning unit. It was really fashioned as a birdbath and the birds do use it, but several weeks ago a green frog (Rana clamitans) took up residence in its shallow water.

Green frogs grow to be rather sizable frogs. In our area, only bullfrogs are larger. By the size of its tympanum or eardrum (prominent circle behind its eye) you can tell it’s a male. Like the gray treefrog of last week (see June 12 posting) green frogs generally call May through late summer.

Green frogs live in ponds, not birdbaths, but this guy seems quite content. I’m surprised because I live on a ridge, a long ways from any natural pond, so how did he find me? He has hopped a good distance, uphill all the way, whereas, it would seem, that his natural instinct would have lead him to hop downhill. Water is always found down not up.

I can relate. I have always been rather wayward, hopping in the wrong direction, often uphill instead of down, the hardest road, so to speak. I’m reminded of Robert Frost, “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: / Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.”

As a footnote: I’ll be even more flummoxed, if the green frog’s calls manage to attract a female. Perhaps, she will be just as wayward as he. In that case, a good match.
•