ImagiNature Studio

The Spring Peepers of Summer... 

On Saturday morning, August 2nd, I once again took advantage of my local park, Roaches Pond in Spryfield, to get some photography done before the clouds and rain kept me home in front of the computer processing photos instead of out taking them. At one point a fairly large robber fly passed me and landed on a maple leaf. Much to my surprise and delight, just a couple of leaves away from the robber fly busily eating its breakfast, I found a pair of Spring Peepers (Pseudacris crucifer). I did take a couple of quick record photos of the fly but I quickly forgot it!

These are the first chorus frogs that I've seen in Nova Scotia and to find a pair of them sharing the same leaf was special. I'm a big fan of frogs and other amphibians, large and small, and have many (many!) photos of chorus and tree frogs from Texas. These two were not the most diminutive amphibians that I've ever seen (that honour belongs to the Great Plains Narrow Mouth Toad, Gastrophryne olivacea) but they were really close...they are tiny!

As you can tell from knowing that the two frogs were sharing only a single lobe of the same Red Maple (Acer rubrum) leaf, each of the frogs was only about three-quarters of an inch (about 19mm) long. I suspect this photo is of the female and the one above is of the male. This may have been a "secret rendezvous" that took a bit longer than expected! Then again, perhaps they were just resting between bouts...