Yesterday, the marsh was alive with the sound of music, frog music. Entire areas of the marshland seemed to resound with waves of sounds, some it high-pitched and some of it lower in range. The warm weather, in the low 60’s (16 degrees C), seemed to have roused the frogs from their sleep and they were in the mood to sing.
Although I could identify the general areas of the frog activity, it proved to be very difficult to spot the frogs themselves. My eyes scanned and rescanned the shallow waters near the cattails until at last I spotted a frog.
I think this frog is a Southern Leopard Frog (Lithobates sphenocephalus), but I am not entirely sure of my identification. You can see from the photo how effectively he is camouflaged.
Frogs and turtles are starting to be active, can the dragonflies be far behind?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
I’ve seen a few insects flying around and have heard red winged blackbirds, but no spring peepers here yet.
Very good capture. I tryed once to capture frog but even if I was as silent as one can be it was not enough . Just one movement of eye lashes and flutch goes frog 🙂
I thought you guys were supposed to get hit with a big snow. 60 degrees — practically the tropics in your neighborhood.
The forecasters were wrong. In my area we got mostly wind and rain, so the snow we got turned wet and slushy. Further west near the Appalachian Mountains, they got a foot or so.
Beautiful. I love the eye and it seems so obvious in the light but I can only image how hard it is to spot.
Thanks, Lyle. The only way that I was able to spot the frog was the reflection off its eye. I was on a raised boardwalk and was down on my hands and knees to try to find (and photograph) one of the frogs. It’s not exactly big game, but the frog’s pose reminded me a little of one of Phil Lanoue’s alligators.
That’s interesting because I was thinking the same thing when I saw it in the reader.