Found this guy on the side of my garage, waiting for the sun to heat him up! While I was out working in the yard, the crows set up quite a racket. I figured they had found an owl and were after him. They can't stand owls being in their territory. Pretty soon they came over right above me. They were chasing a Redtailed Hawk. The hawk landed in a tree and I ran for my camera on the back porch and by the time I got it, they had chased him off again.
I have regular visits from toads and am always grateful to have them. They certainy do their share of munching on the 'baddies' in the garden. I watched two crows mobbing a buzzard today while my daughter was paying for her petrol at a local garage. I always feel so sorry for birds of prey when they're attacked in this way.
What a great shot...and such an interesting frog. It is the Hyla versicolor, I believe. He is a master camoflage expert...looking here alot like lichen one might find on tree bark. Very interesting indeed.
What a cool looking frog you found Capt! The crows around here always alert me to a fox nearby, but sometimes they pester hawks too. I don't like crows much.
Sjoerd, I did a search on hime, and you were right. Also know as the eastern gray tree frog. One interesting thing I found out was that they can totally freeze in the winter and then come back to life in the spring. That is due to having glicarol in the bood. The blood dosn't freeze, just the body!
Capt. your toad is very pretty. We have lots of the common toads. Sjoerd, I thought the same thing when I saw him, he looks just like lichen. If he were on a tree he would be very hard to find.
Well, Kuntrygal biologically speaking they are in two different "families" in terms of classifications. Oddly enough I had been reading-up on toads a few weeks ago and I found this website that gives an idea of the differences between the two: http://allaboutfrogs.org/weird/general/frogtoad.html I always sort of based my use of the words "toad" and "frog" on the difference of skin, body shape and foot webbing(or lack of).
This afternoon, my wife came home from work and she had stopped and bought some milk and things. I was helping her unload the stuff from the car and there was a baby frog just like the big one. He was about 1/3 of the size of the one in the picture. But he was grey and had a similar design on him, but not exactly the same. I caught him hand threm him out in the grass. I wonder how many more there are?
