amphibians
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Froggy
Valley Water in Green-Wood is swarming with tadpoles right now. Here’s one of many hundreds popping up for a gulp of air. They were zooming up and then down into the murk.This rock, however, provided a nice docking area for them. Not sure if there is more than one species here or some are just…
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Kerjillions
The tadpoles of a toad, I assume American Toad (Bufo americanus) rather than Fowler’s (Bufo fowleri), about a centimeter long. In the shallows of Doodletown’s Reservoir. The adult toads live inland but come to fresh water to reproduce.There were innumerable numbers of them. They follow the human sperm plan; produce a lot, a few will…
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Frog Weather
An enormous Bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) in the Lullwater.Nonchalant as a dozen people file by five feet away.
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Ouroboros
Every twenty years or so, my dander gets up and I write a letter to the New York Times. In the mid-1980s, I did it to spank Edward Teller, who poo-pooed the concept of nuclear winter in an Op-Ed, with a reminder of the global climate effects of “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.” That…
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Frog and toad
Out of town recently, I ran into a couple of amphibians I don’t see often. This is the northern leopard frog, Rana pipiens, seen amidst its bullish and greeny brethren along the side of a road in Haverhill, MA. UPDATE 6/14: see the comments for discussion of this frog, which is probably a green frog…
Backyard and Beyond 