Frogs

I've been monitoring wildlife in my garden to help some research for the Environment Agency. Anyway, I thought I'd share a pic of the cutest little frog ever that was one of the 12 I caught and measured this morning. I think it must be one of this year's earlies.



And here's a fully grown one for comparison:





I'm such a saddo

How did you catch such a small frog?

Frogs are neat!

Funnily enough, it was just sat there!!

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We used to get LOADS of frogs and newts in our pond, but in the last 5 years or so, they've just stopped appearing

Not loads, enough to hear them fighting at night occasionally (although that may be the foxes actually...), but it's always been like that.

Acid rain has killed off the frogs, methinks.

Along with frog scientific journals. x_X

I see that Borg's downing 2 chocolate choo choos and upheaving into your pond has had the expected effect.

Crows, frogs, kittens, is there any problem a .22LR won't solve?

What a caliber!

^
Twenty years ago, or thereabouts, I used to sit on the dam of my dad's stock tank and plink frogs with a lever action .22.

If you aimed just right, you could send them flying six or eight feet in the air.

Poor frogs.

Diacanu has you beat though, I vaguely remember him saying he used to blow them up with fireworks.

The only thing better than eating frog legs is salting them so the nerves twitch and they jump while in the skillet.

Acid rain, agricultural run-off, oestrogen and pharmaceutical-laced piss getting into watercourses, among loads of other things.

Prefer toads and newts to frogs, but ALL 'phibians are cool.

We've been seeing a lot of those frogs around here lately. The food chain is really gearing up for a busy season. The little frogs are getting eaten by the rattlers and the rattlers and other snakes are targets for the hawks that have been screeching. And, of course, the buzzards are there to clean up whatever leftovers there might be.

Nature is amazing.

Does it get cold enough to freeze the water in Britain? How do the frogs survive the winter?

<bump>

Got some pictures





Cooper's Hawk, I believe. The description I read on them didn't say anything about eating snakes, which is a shame...

I've also found rattlesnakes in the yard next to the house while I was mowing. Definitely not something I want to repeat. They can stay in the woods where they belong and I won't bother them.

KES!

It's hard to tell from the piccies, how big is that hawk, Bock?

I got within about 10 yards and I'm guessing he's about 1-1.5 feet tall. (maybe 1/2 meter) The picture I saw online showed a scrawny bird but this one looks like he's getting plenty to eat. I couldn't even begin to guess the weight or wingspan.

That's the roofline of our house if that helps any.

I've never heard of those types of hawk before. It's a beautiful bird

ETA: It looks like our Sparrowhawk -- are they the same thing?

I don't know what else it's called or even if it's anywhere else other than Canada/U.S. They belong to the same family.

Here's another link with pictures

I think I'll just post something here to get another rep!

I don't know why, but that struck me as freakin' high-larious.

Oh, we so need that as a giant smiley for the threads