Cricket Frogs

My water garden is suddenly loaded with Cricket Frogs. This is something that hasn’t happened before and I’m not sure if they are adult frogs that moved in when other places began to go dry or if they are freshly metamorphosed youngsters. Whatever the reason, I love seeing all of these frogs.

Cricket Frogs are neat little things. Although they are considered treefrogs, their tiny toe pads aren’t well suited to an arboreal life style. I guess these are the treefrogs that specialize in roots and fallen leaves. Their warty skin and earth tone coloration makes them very well camouflaged on the ground, but their backs often display bright green patches or stripes.

I’m inclined to believe that these are young frogs that developed in the water garden. I heard a Cricket Frog calling in the water garden this spring, so I’m assuming some eggs were laid. Cricket Frogs have bred in the pond many times in the past, but have never moved to the water garden during dry weather. All of these frogs are at the lower end of the adult size range, which also seems to be the higher end of the newly metamorphosed size range. Plus, I saw one that looked like it had a nub of a tail, so I’m looking at them as kids.

The behavior of this guy also suggests that it is young. Here, it has spotted a Mound Builder Ant that is pulling itself out of the water.

This ant certainly looks like something that should be eaten.

Well, I managed to miss photographing the actual attack. The frog lunged, grabbed, spasmed and ejected the ant in less than a second. The ant seems a bit frazzled and the frog appears to be a little wiser. I think an older frog would have already learned not to grab the red and black things that give such a nasty bite.

A July Pond

Some of you see a pond looking much like it did a couple of months ago and wonder why I consider it such a spectacular sight. The simple reason is, because I normally don’t have a pond in July. In a typical year the best I can manage in the third week of July is a mud flat. By August I should be able to walk across the bottom without getting mud on my shoes.

I love to dabble in water and this pond rates quite high in dabblability. I’ll spend many hours around the pond in the next few months watching various aquatic organisms colonize what now appears to be a permanent body of water. The reeds are taking advantage of the extra water to expand their colony.

The willows and dogwoods lining the bank also flourish in the wet soil. They’ll pay for their exuberance in the next dry year. Their life is one of expansion and die-back dictated by yearly fluctuations in weather patterns, but their patterns match stride for stride so neither has advantage at any time. Although there’s constant change, there’s also stability in the community as a whole.

Part of the pond bank is kept cleared. This is partly because the electric right-of way crosses the pond dam and partly because it’s really hard to dabble in the water when you have to fight the vegetation to get to it. This also gives a place for the Solitary Sandpiper to run when it visits each year.

For a pond that’s only 70 feet across at the widest point, there’s a great diversity of vegetation growing along the bank. Shrubs, grasses and forbs all have a place around the pond. There are moisture loving plants that appear here only in exceptionally wet years. This will be their year to replenish the supply of seed that tries each year to produce another generation of plants, but more often than not is doomed to die.

The crayfish love this kind of weather. There’s enough water coming in to allow a constant flow to travel through the crayfish burrow. The flow of water is not very fast, but it is constant. Around the edge of this burrow you can just see a slight downward bend to the algae and other detritus as it is gently pulled by the moving water. The scat lovers among us may notice the short segments of crayfish droppings down and left of the burrow. These were left by the owner of the burrow after a night trip around the pond bottom in search of food.

Eastern Cricket Frogs are everywhere. You can hear their clicking call day and night. This is a late breeding species that seldom has a chance to successfully breed in the pond. This may be their year.

The fun in having the pond hold water all year is the opportunity to see species like this Twelve-Spotter Skimmer, that don’t normally visit. I also enjoy seeing the speed at which organisms take advantage of what is essentially a newly developed habitat. New amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, insects and a host of other invertebrates seem to appear every day to claim a part of this virgin territory. They may remain for a year or two, or they may die without producing a new generation, but the ability to exploit this new resource is a fascinating study.

I don’t think anything as beautiful as the Common Green Darner should have “common” as part of its name. Common should be replaced with Brilliant or Spectacular. A late season pond is the only thing that gets these big dragonflies to sit still long enough for a good look. Most years I must be content with watching the Green Darner flocks looping and buzzing over the fields. If I find one at rest, it’s because it was injured. As long as the pond has water, I’ll get a lot of good views of this species. Rain on the way means pond’s gonna stay. I just made up that saying. I can hear thunder in the distance.