Kermit II

One evening our daughter sent a picture of a little critter she found on her recycling bin. It was a gray tree frog clinging to the large plastic container. Although gray tree frogs are fairly common, they’re not often seen since they spend most of the warmer months high in the tops of trees.

"If you'd put it in a glass jar with a damp paper towel, we’ll be there tomorrow so I can photograph it" was my response. The next morning we drove the 25 miles to our daughter’s place. And there it was, the little frog and the damp paper towel in a jar with a piece of fine mesh covering the top.

The closest tree to where the frog was found was a fairly large oak, so it was there that the little frog was set free.

Gray tree frogs can gradually change their color to various shades of gray, green and brown, becoming extremely well camouflaged and blending in with the background –

Because their skin is bumpy, gray tree frogs are often mistaken for toads. But they’re not toads, they’re true frogs.

When they’re not actively hunting for food or it's not the breeding season, gray tree frogs often remain on a horizontal branch, under loose bark, or in a hole in a tree.

Winter is spent under the leaf litter in wooded areas. Unlike many amphibians, but like wood frogs, gray tree frogs can easily survive being frozen. When spring arrives they breed in standing water and then spend the remainder of the warm months high in trees or shrubs, feeding on insects.

Unlike the rest of their well camouflaged bodies, these little frogs have bright orange or yellow inner legs –

These are thought to startle predators, enabling the frog to escape; or, when the frog crouches down and the bright color disappears, confuse predators allowing the frog to escape detection.

As I photographed the little one it climbed higher into the tree until it could no longer be located.

NOTE: This is Kermit II since the first Kermit post was written in 2016.

 

Late Summer in the Hollow

As summer ended it was time to check the card in the camera trap in the hollow. The latter half of July was extremely dry as was the entire month of August. Nonetheless, there was a good variety of wildlife appearing in the videos –

The second buck has what are called cutaneous fibromas on its face that appear as dark lumps. These fibromas are cause by a virus and don’t actually injure the deer, nor does the virus affect other mammals, including humans.

It’s quite possible that the screech owl caught one of the flying squirrels and made a meal of it. Although barred owls frequently prey on flying squirrels, it’s not unheard of for screech owls to do the same.

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There will be no more videos from the running log. I’d moved the camera further from the log where it captured several short videos of deer, and then …

… and then the landowner sold timber from part of the property and the loggers opened up the old road spanned by the running log to use as a skid trail –

Good-bye running log, you were a good place for a camera trap.