The last time I saw "Green Frogs" was during their mating season after a rain storm in July 2011 - in the woods 40 miles from home next to a cattail marsh.



Oddly, I had one show up in my stock tank yesterday that I keep full all year around by the brush piles next to the house set up as a watering hole for my bird photography. It was sitting on a piece of outdoor carpeting put in the water as a perch for the birds. I couldn't really tell, but it was there probably feeding on insects - small flies and mosquitoes.

I have never seen one inland from the marsh over my 13 years of travel in the area practicing nature photography where I live.

Jonathan

Wow that's odd to me. Green frogs where EVERYWHERE when I was growing up in Ransomville. In the yard, the garden, the ditch, the creek, the woods.... it wasn't until I left NY that I noticed the absence of them!

Jonathan That is what makes nature so beautiful .You can spend a lifetime in the outdoors ,studying and observing and there is always something new and fascinating to see .Great pictures as always

Frogs of several species in the US and of many species world wide have suffered enormous population declines and in some cases, extirpation during the past 50-70 years. The cause(s) of these declines has been the topic of studies and debate for over 30 years and is generally little understood to this day. Much of the speculation resembles that we as trappers have about the declines in North American muskrats. Although a single species of infectious fungi that likely originated in Africa is now implicated in some of the most critical declines, there are other proposed causes that might also be involved. Because frogs spend most of their life as eggs, larvae and adults in or near water, they are almost totally dependent on water that does not contain chemicals that would be lethal to any of their life stages. There is much more to this story and very little being done to deal with the problems.


As a young boy I began collecting commercial quantities of frogs in eastern South Dakota and shipping them via train to a facility in Milwaukee which in turn resold them to the medical field where they were used in pregnancy testing. The numbers of frogs that were present in the early to mid 1950s would stun folks today. I caught hundreds of pounds some weeks and bought many more from neighbors. My plan to become rich ended abruptly when in the mid 1950s, an alternative test was developed for pregnancy testing and my market ended. Today in the exact same area, there are almost no frogs left.

Great pictures Jonathan!

Over the last 3 years the numbers of Leopard frogs has come up in numbers in the boreal forest. They migrate to our lake now and burrow into the lake bottom to hibernate You are finally able see some adults small fist size.
Paved roads and tire traffic take their toil

So friends used post hole augers and put lines along the marshes and collected the frogs for the Grade 11. dissecting classes. At 25 cents payed for a few university courses

Growing up as a kid on the farm any small frogs were "green frogs" that we use to see in the ditch and hay field behind the barn - never knew them back then by their formal name: Leopard Frog. Their numbers are significantly down compared to past years.

Jonathan

After further review and contact with the New York State research biologist in my region for an ID confirmation, the frogs (first 3 photos above) living in my stock tank are Green Frogs. They are in fact abundant in my area, and state wide. I wasn't paying close enough attention after moving to the area until recently.

The other similar looking green-colored species when small are Bullfrogs. They do get to fist size as adults, but the Leopard Frogs remain small as adults.

There is a nearby shallow 4 acre pond that is a nursery for Bullfrogs. The photos below were taken in 2011 and 2012 when it was loaded with them.

And, so it goes.

Jonathan

Green Frogs in my stock tank





Bullfrogs

leopard frogs fished by drifting with the wind, letting them bounce along the bottom are without a doubt a top notch channel cat bait. Tied correctly on a 5/0 hook they slide up your line and will catch several fish each. I have a cage made of hail screen to keep them in. Has a light bulb in the top and a pie pan in the bottom. Keep water in the pie pan, the light on at night, the cage in the shade. Light draws bugs and they are easy to keep.

30 years ago we caught those big eating size bullfrogs around here without to much effort. Plenty of small ones but they don't get big anymore. No clue whats going on with bull frogs.

Used to gig lots of bull frogs. What I found in them were crawfish and other smaller frogs. If they don't get big now it's possible that enough food is not available.

Not as many bugs. To much pesticide being used. Used to see thousands of liggtning bugs in the summer on hot nights. Now see 6-8 on a good night. Leave the porch light on a few hours and had to sweep june bugs off by the gallons. Might have 3-4 now

Thats so sad....I love lightning bugs . I do miss them, since they aren't in this region.

Enjoy those froggies, Jonathan ! Great close ups . Thank you for the share, and info.

Great pics as usual Jonathan.No bullfrogs here in the north.I used to kill the big bullfrogs for their legs growing up as a kid in central ONT.We would whack them with a paddle from the canoe.
Here in the North we have the little peepers by the millions it seems when they start peeping in the spring.
We have the leopard frogs here,but they are pretty scarce.
This is a pic of a big one from last summer when I w
as out nuisance trapping beaver.

Squacks, If I captured a few of those small bullfrogs to keep as "pets" in an aquarium, and fed them with a constant supply of insects for an extended period of time, is it possible they would grow to tennis ball size? The large bullfrogs I have seen over the years are mostly nocturnal feeders, starting near dusk. Years ago, I recall shining and gigging for them around midnight, but I have also seen and heard them during daylight hours.

Is it possible that the small ones have become a subspecies as genetic mutants over time?

One thing I do know is that the abundance of the smallies provide for an easy picking food supply for Green Herons during the day.

Jonathan

Sounds like the muskrat problem then. Too many predators and they all are protected and the bottom of the food chain comes up missing.......jk

Was shocked one year in the middle of winter to see thumb size (tree frogs maybe) frog living and active in my well pit zero light and about 15 feet to the bottom of the well! The must spend their entire life in that hole eating whatever they find, had some above ground until I got chickens they were hard on them.

I am no frog expert for sure. My guess is that for a bull frog to get big at some point it is going to need bigger food. The big ones can and do eat large crawfish and those leopard sized frogs. The lake I live on has some bullfrogs that don't seem to get big either. I have not seen small frogs or crawfish in it. The lake has a mostly sand bottom. It is plenty weedy but I never have seen a crawfish.
Another predator of frogs that is fairly new around here is those white egrets. There are a lot of critters out there looking for frogs.

Ahhhhh, Jonathan. This is my dream thread!

Beautiful photos! Thank you for posting.

found this guy just now in a bucket I keep my submersible minnow bucket in.

When available in spring/early summer, Great Blue Herons are another predator that takes advantage of their abundance.

Jonathan