Summer’s really hoppin’ at the ol’ swimmin’ hole!

This year’s extraordinarily wet spring may have put a crimp in the plans for your garden, but the repeated soaking rains and slow progression of warming temperatures have provided that perfect world about which frogs usually can only dream.
While deep, dark ruts still mark the depths to which the tractor labored against mud and tall grass in the first mowing of spring, the amphibians in my yard couldn’t be happier. This year, those dual-lived dwellers of puddles, pools and ponds can casually complete their life changes without the race against water drying out, as happens so many other times.

Cope's Gray Tree Frog, adult
Hyla chrysoscelis

While my property with its pond, vernal pools and countless puddles offers no shortage of real estate for those in the market for a watery abode, the Cope’s gray tree frogs consistently move in to the shallow basin that develops on top of the above-ground pool. Draped in its dark plastic liner, the 15-foot circle collects melting snow and spring rain in yet another vernal pool of sorts, catching leaves as well, from the cherry tree and sugar maple towering above.

Even before dusk, as the days of spring warm and the air thickens and becomes sweet with honeysuckle and black locust, a frog calls from a nearby tree. Before nightfall, he will climb down from his lichen-covered post nearby, make his way across the few feet of lawn and scale the cool, white side of the swimming pool. In the darkness, others will join him until 15-20 perch at the surface, poised in just several inches of clear water. Their raspy calls fill the damp night air.
By morning, small gelatinous clusters of 10-40 cloudy, white eggs stand out easily against the dark pool liner. The frogs, clinging by their sticky toe pads to the branches all around, seem to have become invisible in their lichen-colored skins…until the day fades and the frogsong brings them out once more.

Cope's Gray Tree Frog eggs

For a lover of nature and, especially, a watcher of the same, this arrangement couldn’t be any better. Just feet from my backdoor and without even squatting down, I can stand eye-to-eye with this cauldron of amphibian activity. Of course, if you’d like to take a swim, the people pool must wait for its upstairs tenants to move along. Slower springs have found us carrying tadpoles by the 5-gallon bucketful to new homes across the field. Little Pond always welcomes them readily, though it’s far easier on the human transports if the frogs vacate the premises under their own leg-power.

I measure the progression of spring,
as 2 legs become 4,
as plump, dark, tailed bodies slim to frog shape,
as hundreds climb from the water to cross the cool, white side of the pool.

Summer is near when tiny gems of jade and gold escape to the safety of green.

Cope's Gray Tree Frog, froglet on pool

Cope's Gray Tree Frog froglet
Look at those sticky toe pads!

With a pointed posterior where the tail has disappeared,
these tiny froglets are under 1/2 inch long!

Seeking green, he climbs onto a blade of grass.

Toes are so small they're almost transparent!

Little Froglet in the Clover

Although gray tree frogs call throughout the summer, especially on nights when the air is warm (60F+ degrees) and moist, their breeding season is late spring. Ponds, vernal pools and, often, swimming pools are used by tree frogs for breeding. The gray tree frog (tetraploid gray tree frog), Hyla versicolor, and Cope's gray tree frog (diploid gray tree frog), Hyla chrysoscelis, are visually indistinguishable from one another. In parts of their southern geographic range where the 2 species have overlapping distribution, the difference in their calls must be used to tell them apart, with Copes' being shorter and faster.
Tree frogs, in comparison with other frogs, are rather slow-moving and often climb, rather than hop, moving effortlessly along tree branches, well camouflaged by a quickly-changeable skin color. Adults eat crickets, moths and flies.
Can you see the spider, a bold jumper, waiting to tackle a tiny froglet?

Adult Cope's gray tree frogs

The Frog Days of Summer

Cope's Gray Tree Frog

The day has become dark, the air heavy.
This morning, standing waist deep in the field of blackberry brambles, their canes bent low beneath a load of plump fruit, I prided myself at having chosen the perfect day for their picking. Cool and clouded, it had allowed me to don the heavy garments that keep the thorns guarding their precious fruit at bay. And, wrapped in long pants, boots to the knee, and a double layer of long sleeves above, I had plodded out to the old pasture and taken up residence there, or so I thought, for what would be a full morning.
Within minutes, the first of many soft raindrops fell. And, not wanting to return to the house empty handed, I tucked the large bowl under a shirttail and continued picking in the rain. Steadily ticking onto the broadly-leaved canes, the shower drowned out every sound except that of some cedar waxwings above in a nearby tree. From the safety of the grass below, small tree frogs, spring peepers, climbed into view and peered at me with long inquisitive stares. Brought out from the tangles where they wait out the days of summer sun, this rainy day now suited them just perfectly. Soaking up every drop from the sky and drinking in what water covered every leaf, my sleeves quickly hung heavy, pants sagged and soon slung low. Drips found their way from my hairline to my brow, tumbling down my nose and cheek until I felt there was not one inch of me that hadn’t become wet.
As I reluctantly slogged back across the field, the few small trees rang with the raspy calls of gray tree frogs.
There is a distant rumble of thunder and still the steady rapping of raindrops on the leaves. A morning like this is what I love about the frog days of summer.

juvenile Cope's gray tree frogs

Cope's gray tree frogs use the covered top of our above ground pool for their breeding. The several inches of water they need to lay their eggs remains long enough for hundreds to turn from tadpoles to baby frogs in just a few weeks' time.
They emerge from the water as gorgeous green tiny-legged frogs and disappear into the grass of the backyard.

This Curious Frog

Water Plantain around vernal pool

It’s been weeks since I’ve walked these waters—the flattened remnant of what had been the old farm’s pond, now shallow and holding water only until late summer, when August heat dries it, and weeds fill its basin with growth.
This year, though, frequent spells of rain, broken only by days that have given us “the coolest July on record” have kept it well-filled—almost toppling over the rim of my boots, as I walk a slow arc, past the thick green stems, the ring broken only in a few places by the paths of muskrats crossing to the surrounding fields from their burrow on the bank beside me.


The lives of the water have left it now—
salamanders and frogs hatching from eggs left here in great floating masses on the first warm nights of spring, have walked away—
on new legs, to lives on land.

Baby Tree Frog, newly emerged

Just a few of the very last to use this small pool linger now, at the edge.
Tiny Tree Frogs, some still with a vestige of tadpole tail, have found safety in the thick green of the ring.
And glow like enameled jewels against green leaves.
Barely half an inch long, minuscule fingers of glass,
even so small, the padded toe reaches and grasps--climbing carefully.
I so love this curious frog.

baby Cope's Gray Tree Frog

Check out the color!
(all photos click to enlarge)

Night Life

If you could see this darkness, feel this night,
heavy under clouds, dripping with dew,
thick with frogs and moths, drawn to the first blushing blooms of milkweed,
you would know what it is to walk here.

It’s been weeks since I have visited my pools, as in the probing visit of this night--
most days just a cursory glance, as I walk on to the woods,
following the wings of dragonflies,
watching birds high in the trees above.

Yes, the shallow water remains.
And, though almost choked with a mat of green snarls encroaching from every edge, the deep, clear, dark water sustains life, napping through the sunshine of a hot summer day.
But, tonight, when, even through a closed window, air conditioner groaning beneath this blanket of humidity, frog song penetrates to within a brick house, I cannot help but wander there.
Every bit of this field is calling.


Orange eyes aglow, hundreds of buff-colored moths, feathery antennae curling back and forth, feed at the heavy heads of grasses, bending their arching stems low to the ground, and cover the large, rosy globes of milkweed blossoms, strong and sweet with nectar.


The heat from a very warm day has remained into the night. Glass beads on every blade of grass glisten with dew. My bare arms as well, quickly covered with a layer of moisture, soon tingle with an itch from every flying insect drawn to me, my light a beacon into blackness that readily swallows it. Even my face, misted and framed in curls brought on by this bath of steaminess, especially interesting to the smallest moths, darting in darkness past mouth, nose, eyes and ears.
A head net, next time--I must remember that.

Northern Leopard Frog, Rana pipiens

Waist-deep in vigorously growing poison ivy, I wade through green to the pool’s edge, my tall spotted boots stepping carefully into the cool water, the soft, woven mat, broken in places perfect for even the largest of frogs to hide in wait.

American Bullfrog, Rana catesbeiana

All across the surface of the smooth water, small mouths rise to grab air, then disappear with the flash of an ivory belly to hide themselves in layers of brown detritus, inches deep beneath my feet.
Shapes I recognize easily—and was hoping to see tonight, caught in the beam of my light through cola-colored water--salamander nymphs, still sporting gills like Elizabethan collars, but soon to lose them, strengthen new legs and walk off to the woods. Having started the season dry, this spring has brought heavy and frequent rains—a good chance that the water will remain weeks longer, and another generation graduate to lives on land.

The movement of a winding, striped form beside my toe startles me. And, though I know he should be here, I’ve never seen him--a Northern Water Snake, browsing the brown bottom, rising to look across the surface. Then, equally startled by finding me in his pool, he dashes below and disappears.

Northern Water Snake, Nerodia sipedon

From the center of this basin, I am surrounded.
First by the ring of dark water, then by the green at its edge. Framed by small Red maples, their toes wet.
It is as if I am drawn into a fanciful scene, where all possible life converges in a single place for a moment--the deer, rabbit, and raccoon, beside bluebird, mink and snake, while fish, frog and turtle swim.
A snapshot, so complete, yet unlikely.

Cope's Gray Treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis

Yet, as I move toward his fervent call, raised to the night air, as others do the same, I am sure, for this moment, I am witness to a collision of lives not always like this.

Stirred from quiet rest, postured to project,
their song from every tree,
“Welcome to my world. We’ve been expecting you!”

Cope's Gray Treefrog
vocal sac inflated

(all photos enlarge with a click)

Slice of Life

The air is sweet with honeysuckle, thick with frogsong—and a heaviness that wishes for rain.
Ahead of my steps along the path, small Woodfrogs and even tinier Spring Peepers, several weeks ago nothing more than specks of black within the clouded gelatinous masses floating in Little Pond Pool, scurry to bury themselves in a tangle of uncut grass—their safety, a hasty retreat.
While, poised and patient, the treefrog, noisy into the night with song, waits for me to pass. Long, knobby toes curled carefully, stepping and sticking tight, his safety--hiding in plain sight.

Cope's Gray Treefrog, Hyla chrysoscelis
(Green color phase to match his surroundings)

click photos to enlarge

Check more Camera Critters here.