As previously mentioned, we have a pond. The pond has frogs. Every day I do frog patrol once or twice—walking around doing a count. My record so far is 12 red-legged frogs. I'm sure there were more—these are brown frogs sitting on mud, after all. There have been fewer of them recently, probably partly because it's been sunnier and partly because of the garter snakes.
I've never lived anywhere that had frogs, so this is all somewhat new. I'm learning a lot, and when I'm totally mystified I email my herpetologist friend and say, "Harry? What does this mean?" He's very obliging.
It became clear when the Pacific treefrogs started their spring nighttime chorus that there are A Lot of Them. The chorus was so loud that it was almost painful. Treefrogs also tended to pop up in unexpected places, hopping out of a clump of weed when I put a spade into it, for example. They don't limit themselves to the pond, so they're actually relatively easy to catch as they struggle frantically through the grass, especially the little ones. The one disturbed by my spade was admired and then carefully replaced a little ways away, where she sat quietly. (We think it was a female because it was extraordinarily fat, which may also explain the lack of movement when we put her down.) There was the one that appeared on the glass of the door one night, its throat pulsing gently. (It dropped off onto the ground when the cat noticed it and started poking at the door.) I caught one with a body only 5/8 of an inch long, narrow-waisted like a dancer—that one was more agile but didn't have a lot of range with its jumps.
The red-legged frogs in the pond don't generally venture too far from it. They often perch in grass facing the water and ready to leap if things look dicey. Many of them seem to return to specific perches. One in particular has his own tuft of grass just at the pond's edge—he nestles down into the centre and surveys his domain. Others lurk near the bulrushes. I finally managed to catch one to look at closely—they're fast and slippery. As Pericat said at the time, they're retained energy just waiting to be released. We've also seen them floating at the surface of the water, drifting with the breeze. I wonder what they were up to?
Although they're hard to catch, the larger red-legged frogs are remarkably tolerant of being photographed, as long as the camera doesn't approach from the top or front, so I've gotten some great closeups. (The smaller frogs are much more skittish, which makes sense when you think about it.)
One of the frogs was bulgy—it looked like someone had blown it up like a balloon. I haven't seen that one for a while, so we're not sure if it has survived, but then the frogs have generally been more in the pond than out as the weather has gotten hotter and dryer, so it's hard to tell if it's actually missing. Harry tells me that swollen frogs are sometimes seen, but the reasons for their state are unknown, with the best guess being something to do with their ability to control their water balance. Apparently they often recover from this condition, so we'll hope that happened in this case.
The local wildlife organization asked if we'd like to join their frog monitoring program, so we're waiting to hear more about it. We're enthusiastic—to our mind anything that encourages frogs is a Good Thing!
