Cricket frog day

The fall season at Rainbow Bay continues to be confusing.  A few more marlbed salamanders came in but the winner today was the southern cricket frog, Acris gryllus.  We don’t get a ton of these in the buckets, but tend to see them hopping all over the place near the fence. They are one of the species that can hop the fence so we have some basic data on their numbers at the bay, but nothing as detailed as we do for many other species. They have some serious “ups” and watching someone try to catch one can be pretty entertaining.  I was the entertainment today as I tried to grab a bunch of them.  They let you get nice and close and then ‘sproing’ and you are left empty handed, but convinced you’ll get them before the next jump.  Works for me with about half of them and then other half I give up on. We probably had about 10 or so at the fence today and a few yesterday and aren’t really sure what has them moving around. It’s not their breeding season and it’s still as dry as can be outside.  Cricket frogs are really cool and they have a ton of different color patterns--check this out to see a couple of really beautiful ones. Around here it can also get confusing because we get both northern and southern cricket frogs and they can be tough to tell apart.

It is actually supposed to rain tomorrow but given the way the season is going probably no marbleds will move tomorrow night!  We’ll see.