Baby European Tree Frog visits my blackberry bushes (Dial-up warning)

I've been trying all summer to get a photo* of one of these little guys. He/she is a baby European Tree Frog, and he's about the size of my thumbnail. When they're full grown, they can fill up the night with their chirping/croaking in the hedges. This one's just a baby, though, and still pretty shy and quiet.



*This is the uncropped version of a photo I just posted in the Photography Forum.

There's a bigger one on the left side of the pic too, half hidden behind a leaf.

I totally didn't see that!!!

Between the two diagonal brown branches there... can't tell if it's a green leaf with a white underside and the shadow looks like the stripe and eye of a frog, or if it's a frog.

It looks like a small snake to me.

:hi:

and this summer, they suddenly started showing up in the grass and our blackberries. I can't tell you how many of these little guys I've gently moved to higher ground while cutting my mother-in-law's grass this summer. :loveya:

but I swear I see a snake's head on the left hand side sticking out from a leaf. Am I correct?

We do have some grass snakes, pond snakes and some oddly snake-looking lizards here, but I didn't notice one when I was shooting the photo. :blush:

Dark Tirade noticed it too.

If that is a leaf, it looks incredibly like a snake's head. :)

We do have snakes around here, and CMW was nipped by one when he was a kid. The snakes here are not very venemous, but you have to physically remove their fangs from you flesh, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't ignorantly approaching one with a short lens. Thank you so much for raising my awareness (I mean that. I wouldn't kill a snake, but I don't want to be nipped by one, either.) :yoiks:

the frogs face look alike, too. This an amazing photo. It's so sharp.

I love tree frogs. :loveya:

The country intersection closest to me, there is one corner filled with nothing but woods and before that is a marshy depression that stays swampy even in the driest drought, like now.

They just love that corner an sing out all night long. :-)

I have to admit that I never even noticed frogs until I moved here. We live on the edge of a federal nature preserve, so it's pretty hard to ignore their very vocal presence. Now, I'm lulled to sleep in the summer by their singing. :loveya:

look like miniature bullfrogs, shades of grey and brown. But looking them up, it appears there is a species here in NA that looks similar to that one.

They're so cuuuuttte. I can almost, almost understand where that fairytale about kissing frogs came from. :D

in the US. (not to be confused with the green tree frogs in Australia, which are known mostly here in the US as Dumpy tree frogs or White's tree frogs, to avoid the confusion. :) )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_green_tree_frog

Another closely related species is the squirrel tree frog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel_Tree_Frog

You'll also find cuban tree frogs down further south than that, I caught a couple that hopped through the back door at my last job. They look relatively plain, but slowly change color from dark brown to light tan to green depending on their background There are a few other breeds of tree frogs here in the US, but I only know the ones in my area. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_tree_frog

There are also gray tree frogs throughout most of the US and Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_tree_frog

Then there's the tiny (unless you go by volume :) ) spring peeper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_peeper

And there's also the Pacific tree frog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Tree_Frog
of which I know very little about, since I live near the Atlantic. :)

And truly _tiny_. When I spot one while mowing the lawn, I pick him/her up and move him into the hedges. :)

he'd have bitten me. :rofl:

SMARTY-PANTS! :spank:

:loveya:

I couldn't resist.He sort of just blends in hugh :silly:
It is a terrific picture :loveya:

:hi:

When I first started seeing them around this summer, they were as tiny as my pinky fingernail, and sooooooooo timid. Something funky is going on with their habitat here: six or seven years ago, after the summer rains, we'd see them climbing up the French doors and clinging to the kitchen windows. This is the first one I've seen in ages. I'm so glad they're back. :)

It really underscores the tininess of the frog. Very cool pic!

but second guessed myself when I decided to post in the Photography Forum. :blush:

Thanks for the kudos, friend. I just feel extremely fortunate that this little guy let me take his photo. They're pretty elusive.

I love little frogs - not too many around here. I love to hear em. I love all the sounds of summer/late summer - the crickets, the clacking bugs (not sure what they are called), the fireflys (somewhat absent this year), even the cicadas and locusts.

Very neat. I wish we had them in LA.

:cheers: