Posts Tagged Copes Gray Tree Frog
Hurtling Toward Summer — with Photos
Posted by piedmontgardener in Favorite Plants, Native Wildlife, piedmont gardening on June 12, 2015
A honeybee covered in the pollen of the squash blossom it is visiting.
If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you’ll see the bee’s back is covered in pollen. She is the reason my zucchini fruits are multiplying at an alarming rate. The honeybees are busy on all the flowers in my yard.
Check out the laden pollen baskets on this honeybee working mullein flowers.
The honeybees like other colors of flowers too.
A coneflower gets a thorough visit from a honeybee.
The bumble bees are less discriminating than the honeybees. They will tackle any flower.
A zinnia flower gets a visit from a bumble bee.
The blooming pickerel weed in my water feature is popular.
The pink abelias vibrate dawn to dark with busy bumbles:
The Texas White Sage blossoms are frequent targets too:
The dahlias are popular with the pollinators, but I was a tad alarmed to see what else was enjoying one.
I relocated the slug after I took the photo.
Finally today I saw a butterfly other than the few skippers that have stopped by.
This Variegated Fritillary eschewed my pampered blossoms in favor of driveway dandelions.
Three days ago, I noticed that a number of the tadpoles in my little water feature had sprouted legs.
That’s a beet leaf it’s floating above. They adore beet greens.
Yesterday morning just after dawn, I spotted the first two newly emerged froglets. They crawl out and sit on nearby vegetation growing around the water feature until they figure out their next move.
A newly emerged froglet ponders its future on a daylily leaf.
Judging by its feet, I’m guessing this is a tiny Copes Gray Treefrog. They sing lustily around the water feature on warm humid nights. But another species also sings there and lays its eggs, inserting its strongly nasal voice into the deeper chorus of the tree frogs. These are Eastern Narrowmouth Toads.
This newly metamorphosed amphibian still has quite a bit of tail.
I’m not at all certain, but it’s possible that this is a newbie toad. Truthfully, I’m guessing.
Today five more newly metamorphosed frogs/toads were sitting on moist vegetation very early this morning. By the time the sunlight reaches their perches, they’ve moved into deeper shadows. The searing nearly summer sun is too much for their tender bodies. But they love the moist mornings. There’s a small mister in the pond that ultrasonically vibrates the liquid water into vapor that wafts around the pool on morning breezes, adding moisture to the leaves and delicate new frog bodies.
Blooming pickerel weeds in the water feature with vapor from the mister swirling behind them.
Everywhere in the yard and garden I see new life — tiny frogs, abundant fruits ripening in the vegetable garden, and baby birds everywhere.
Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird raise two broods every year in this martin house. The latest batch fledged yesterday.
Next time, I’ll show you how the vegetable garden is doing — assuming it doesn’t melt in this upcoming week’s heat wave. I spent two hours this morning watering everything in the hopes that I would coax some juicy rain clouds to empty on my yard this afternoon. Right now, though, the skies are not looking promising.
In the meantime, enjoy a shot of my evergreen kousa dogwood currently in full bloom. Every year it produces so many flowers that it’s difficult to spot the leaves.
One of my favorite shady spots. Stay cool out there, ya’ll.
Interlude
Posted by piedmontgardener in Native Wildlife, piedmont gardening, Vegetable Gardening on August 6, 2014
About now most late summers I am moaning about the dog days. Anyone who has lived in my region for long knows exactly what I’m talking about. High temperatures, higher humidities, stagnant air so thick you need scuba gear to get from your air-conditioned house to your air-conditioned car. But not this year. At least not in my part of North Carolina.
Currently in full bloom in my yard, the Plumleaf Azalea is a hummingbird magnet.
We’ve had a few hot spells — afternoons when only the jewel-colored dragonflies move with alacrity. But as soon as we are well hunkered down to endure the swelters, a Canadian air mass comes swooshing down, bringing us unusually low high temperatures and several days in a row of steady, off-and-on rain. As I squish around my yard during non-rainy moments, I wonder if this is what it’s like to live in the Pacific Northwest.
Eager mushrooms are popping up everywhere.
Of course, this interlude from our typical late summer weather has a price — fungus. I don’t begrudge the toadstools sprouting everywhere. They usually wait until late September/October to appear, but this is their kind of weather.
The fungus I’m not so fond of afflicts my vegetable garden. The zucchinis have all surrendered to a combination of fungus and squash vine borer attacks. The tomatoes are losing their lower branches to fungus. Fruits are growing ugly black spots. Unless we get a dry heat wave, they won’t hang on much longer. The biggest surprise are the beans. Both Fortex (pole) and Jade (bush) are still astonishingly productive. The cosmos flowers are on the verge of surrender. But the Berry Basket zinnias party on.
Berry Basket Zinnias
Plants and animals proceed with their life cycles as best they can, obeying the calendar more than the weather. Seed production is in full evidence.
Milkweed pods opening to disperse their contents.
Our two months of unusually dry weather reduced seed cone production among my deciduous magnolias, but they still sport some reddening cones.
Umbrella Magnolia cone with friend
Late-summer wildflowers are starting to show off in earnest. Early goldenrods brighten the edges of woodlands, and Monkey Flowers adorn the floodplain.
Goldenrods are just beginning to glow.
Some flowers are fruiting and flowering together, like my native coral honeysuckle variety, ‘Major Wheeler.’ The berries are actually brighter red than the flowers.
Lonicera sempervirens ‘Major Wheeler’
The tadpoles metamorphosing in our little front water feature decided last weekend’s prolonged damp, cool weather was ideal for emergence to full-time air-breathing status. Monday morning, we spotted about a dozen froglets nestled on plants adjacent to the water, most sporting bits of tadpole tail not yet fully resorbed.
Probably a Copes Gray Tree froglet
The Copes Gray Tree Frogs laid their eggs in late spring. But the ensuing dry spell deprived us of their nightly serenades — a lullaby I enjoy most summers. But with the return of rain, they are back, at least on warmer nights. Perhaps the crop of newly hatched tadpoles helped to encourage the large ones to leave their birth pond.
Some of the froglets were green, some bronze, but my camera couldn’t do them justice.
Plants and animals seem to be using these interludes to gather themselves toward the push to autumn. The froglets meditated on their leafy perches for about two days before disappearing deeper into the vegetation when the sun returned.
The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds used the rainy interludes to chug down as much sugar water from my feeder as they could.
Only males have ruby throats. Juveniles and females have white throats.
The flowers they prefer to dine on were mostly closed for business during the cool rains. All the newly fledged birds from this year and their parents crowd the feeder from dawn to full darkness. I count six to eight birds jockeying for feeding slots all day long.
They rarely sit still together.
Male birds are especially intent on fattening up. They’ll be the first to head south to their tropical winter nesting sites, so they can claim the best territories before the females return. I usually notice they are gone by mid-September. The last stragglers generally stop visiting my feeder in early October.
Peaceful interludes rarely last long.
All the natives — hummingbirds, froglets, praying mantises, writing spiders, magnolias, milkweeds, dogwoods — feel the summer slipping ever more quickly past. Whether we see more rainy interludes or swelter through late summer, they know time grows short.
Now is the time to hunker down and finish summer projects, plan fall gardens, and anticipate winter seed catalog dreaming sessions nestled by a crackling fire with a hot cup of cocoa.
Like the natural world surrounding me, I am using these unusual rainy, cool interludes to rest and recharge, knowing that every time the sun returns, weed explosions will add to my nearly infinite gardening to-do list.
A carpenter bee dozes on a Queen Sophia marigold as it waits for the sun to return.
Spring’s New Lives Charge Into Summer
Posted by piedmontgardener in Native Wildlife, piedmont gardening on June 20, 2011
It’s the last full day of Spring, if you measure that season’s departure by the arrival of the Summer Solstice. Of course, it hasn’t felt like Spring for a month now. My area is on track for another record high number of 90+ degree days, and the moderate drought is visibly taking its toll on the vegetation, tall and small.
All Spring, we’ve been watching the cottontail rabbits grow. Here’s one of the teenager bunnies. I call her Betty, but she may be a he, in which case I’ll call him Benny.
Betty (or Benny?) Bunny
The bunnies are fenced out of the vegetable garden. They are free to hop about the yard dining on clover and plantains, which seem to be their favorite food groups. They follow me to the vegetable garden in the morning, watching with what I imagine to be longing as I slam the gate tight behind me, their noses wiggling at the smell of well-watered vegetables. I have no sympathy. They seem to be growing quite fat on the greens I have ceded to them. Why the hawks and owls haven’t found them, I cannot say. These bold bunnies dine openly on the hillside, often accompanied by the calls of Red-Shouldered Hawks.
My neighbor’s pond has yielded a bumper crop of newly emerged toads — both American Toads and Fowlers Toads. For two days, you couldn’t walk in parts of our yard without nearly stepping on a frantically hopping tiny toad. For reasons known only to toad minds, they loitered in our driveway. To avoid a squished toad disaster, I spent a morning scooping them into a bucket and carting them into the vegetable garden. I moved over two dozen, and I think most of them are enjoying their new digs. I spot them resting under squash leaves and beneath basil when I conduct my daily vegetable inspections.
Our little ornamental pond up front is also yielding newly metamorphosed amphibians. The Copes Gray Tree Frogs have been emerging in small groups every few days. Early this final Spring morning I spotted this newly emerged amphibian getting its bearings atop one of our daylilies — Brocaded Gown.
Adjusting to a brave new world
And here’s another froglet — apologies for the fuzzy picture — that shows it still has a bit of its tadpole tail. That’s not unusual on these newly emerged frogs; about a third of them often sport at least a bit of tail when they first leave their birth ponds.
The tail will disappear in a few more days
The new life that surrounds me — be it bunnies, amphibians, or acorns — salutes Spring’s boundless enthusiasms. As searing Summer settles upon us, that enthusiasm will become endurance — if we’re lucky. If Summer’s dry grip is too tight, death counts will rise, and we will all be left panting in the dust, begging clouds for raindrops.
Piedmont Gardener 