A Pickle With Eyes

DD2 finished her exams and came home from college last weekend.  It's hard to believe she's all ready done with her third year.  She is still very gung-ho on becoming a wildlife biologist, and has recently begun looking into possibilities for grad school.

Once home, she couldn't wait to see K3 and Toad, and to go walking in our woods.  A nice warm afternoon allowed her to do both, taking them to see if they could find frogs in the big puddle/small pond in the south end of our woods.

At first, it was hard for the kids to spot small creatures in the deeper water, so DD2 focused their attention on the small trench DH has dug across the woods road to help drain a very flooded area in late April.  In that shallower, easier to see through water, they were able to spot some small tadpoles, very tiny crayfish, mosquito larva, caddis fly houses and larva, and lots of freshwater snails in various sizes.

pointing out aquatic life

examining a small snail

picking up snails all by herself

Once they were able to identify small things in the shallow water, Toad and K3 wanted to see what they could find in the deeper parts.  A few water bugs, some more caddis flies, and then, they spotted a small frog!

DD2 was able to capture it, and demonstrated the proper technique for holding a frog (learned in college, a biologist hold is a bit different from how we always caught and held frogs).  That led to several minutes of examining and discussing the coloration and other aspects of this particular frog, which was a wood frog.  They even were able to see the tiny ear holes.

Now that they had found one frog, it didn't take long to see more.  Mostly wood frogs, but then, a larger frog was spotted.

Can you see the frog?

Spying on them was a green frog.  Literally, as DD2 identified it as a northern green frog (lithobates clamitans melanota).

Despite many attempts to catch it, they were unable to get a close look at the green frog.  It jumped out of reach, into water that was too deep to wade into, and proceeded to float there, observing them.

It was the size of a dill pickle and that's what they decided it looked like: a pickle with eyes.

pickle with eyes

They can't wait to come back over and go to the woods again.   They want to see how much the tadpoles have grown, and try to catch that pickle frog.  :0)