North Queensland wildlife and the environment
We should be seeing more frogs as the Wet season approaches and it would be good to make them feel at home. Here’s one beautiful way of doing just that.
It is not my creation nor even my photo but came to me via facebook. It was too good not to share and I thank Scott for giving me permission to post it.
A couple of our resident frogs got very excited by the rain we had on the night of November 16. We didn’t see them at it but we heard a lot of ecstatic croaking in the night and discovered a large mass of eggs floating in a bucket of rain water next morning.
Wildlife is where you find it. Last night I escaped from an uncomfortably warm hall for a few minutes to cool down in the carpark out the back. It was just a patch of gravel, unlit, separated from Lou Litster Park by an unfinished fence, so it wasn’t promising wildlife territory.
However, a little nose was poking up from one of the posts. In the poor light I wasn’t sure whether it was a gecko (my first guess) or something else, but I remembered what I said last week about “always having a useable camera with you” and fetched my phone…
A couple of days ago my system informed me that, “A new comment on the post Green Tree Frogs – not always green is waiting for your approval.” Readers come up with some fascinating observations so I clicked through straight away. Here’s the email conversation which followed, complete except for the usual greetings, etc.
Yvette: Hi Malcolm,
I live in Darwin NT and have many green tree frogs in the garden. I hunt and catch cane toads every night and came across a black tree frog. I’ve seen many dark green but never black. Have you heard of black tree frogs before? I have a photo of it next to a green one which I’m happy to email to you if you wish.
Malcolm: Black? New to me! I would love to see a photo.
The Dry season isn’t the best for frogs but this Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog, Litoria fallax, seemed comfortable enough amongst the shady leaves of a tree on the edge of the Town Common.