High Summer

It's high summer in Georgia. Insects calling and jumping through my barely-mowed yard (crickets, katydids, grasshoppers cicadas). Black-and Yellow Argiope spiders, some quite large, are weaving their orb webs to glint in the sun and catch insects, some almost as big as they are. The silk anchor lines are amazingly tough and resist rather than break when I accidentally walk into them. There are many more dragonflies than last year and at dusk, a small army of toads (Bufo americanus and Bufo fowleri)emerges from wherever it is that they hide during the day, to hop in search of insects in the relative cool of the night. Most frogs seem to be done calling for now, but at dusk or at the suggestion of rain, the occasional Cope's Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis)will trill. I've been working on my Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina)research, doing some sketching and painting, strategizing about a website to promote my artwork and building a few rain barrels. Lo and behold, they work! I'm also working on a few new county records for some local herps, inspired by my volunteer frog call monitoring and the new Amphibians and Reptiles of Georgia, which I highly recommend. More on the new county records in a future post...

Pictured above is a newly transformed Cope's Gray Tree Froglet. I took this picture at my backyard frog pond last year. Perhaps this little gem is one of the ones I can hear trilling when it rains.