Second day of spring. I just walked back from a visit to the pond at the top of my hill. For those of you following the amphibian progress up there, here's today's (3/21/10) photo of the sunlit clusters of thousands of eggs. The party is still going strong ... wild and noisy. Harper & Row's Complete Field Guide to North American Wildlife describes what I referred to as the frogs' "chuckle-grunt" as "A short rasping clacking almost like clucking (not quacking) sound of domestic ducks." To me, their combined effort still sounds like a TV laugh track. Apparently they call only during breeding season, which begins very early in the spring, "even before ice has completely melted." Their range extends north of the Arctic Circle. Rana sylvatica doesn't hibernate under the water, but in logs, stumps, and under stones.The top two photos of frogs are from their arrival day, St. Patrick's Day, 3/17/10. There were so many photogenic amphibians on hand! Just click on the images to enlarge the photographs. (Then you can admire the frogs' "prominent light dorsolateral folds.") See previous posts for more on the pond. You can do a blog search for the word "pond" and see what comes up as well. I think I am going to check that out right now .... Okay, I'm back. I did the "pond" search of the blog -- how clear it is how much that place means to me. And since the frogs' 2009 arrival comes up, it was fun to revisit those posts and see how closely they correspond with this year's observations.
