Fish and Frog - Turtle and Blog

Friday, October 3, 2008

Sad? Well Just a Tad

Quite honestly I didn't look forward to this week's PhotoHunt theme of 'sad'. It just doesn't seem to fit the general theme and tenor of this blog. I really didn't want to go looking for things that were sad and highlight them in a post.

I was thinking about it one day while I was at the pond and finally came across something that I do find just a bit sad. Not really sad, mind you, but sad in a wistful sort of way. I walked around the pond and took a few shots and combined them below.

Now why would I find these sad? They are just sticks after all. Leaf-less twigs and branches sticking out over the water. What is so sad about that?

Well just a few short weeks ago those same sticks and others like them would have provided a different view. They were the perches for some of my favorite creatures. On almost any day I could walk along the edges of the pond and capture them in their varied colors and intricate patterns with the sunlight reflecting from their delicate wings.

So in a small way, for just a short moment, it makes me a bit sad to see the sticks bare of their recent visitors. Their season has passed and soon they will all be gone for the winter.

But am I really sad? No. I know it is just the cycle of nature. I can be fairly certain that new dragons will arrive next year to perform their aerial acrobatics and occasionally perch on the sticks and twigs to bask in the warm sun. After all, they have been around over 200 million years so they evidently have this cycle business down pat.

PhotoHunt

The Name At The Top

I know the name at the top of the page says 'Fish and Frog - Turtle and Blog' but I must confess we haven't had very many frog posts lately. In fact we haven't had any since the early part of summer when we had tadpoles and tiny frogs by the hundreds (or more likely thousands). There's a good reason for that. We just haven't seen a lot of frogs, at least not the sizable ones.

Of course we saw the odd toad fairly frequently during the summer. Most of those were in the woods or near our houses, not near the pond.
And we continued to see the really tiny frogs along the edge of the pond all the time. I must admit I was a bit surprised by this. They do not seem much bigger than they were when we originally saw hundreds of them months ago, but I see they actually have grown some when I compare them to the earlier photographs. I just expected them to grow a bit larger.
But as for the larger frogs, we just haven't seen many despite the fact that we saw lots of the large tadpoles during the spring. During the early summer we would listen to their mating calls in the evening and could distinguish several different species. Those calls slowly faded away for the most part within a month or so.

I was sure there were some larger frogs around. I could see them from a distance as they jumped into the pond upon my approach. But sneaking up on them for a shot was another matter. Now over the past few weeks I've begun to see a few of them up close.

There was this little guy settled comfortably in the mud along the edge of the water. Larger than the others, but still not what I was looking for. I'm still a little curious about what he was planning to do with that sword-looking stick he has his left front leg wrapped around.

Then a few days ago I found this guy below. Finally, a larger, more interesting frog. Nice patterns and very clean. Out in the open. A good subject if ever there was one.

He just sat there for me as I approached. He even stayed motionless as I sat down cross-legged right before him to take a few shots. Finally he jumped into a small bit of grass which prevented a good clean view. I figured I would use my hand to ease him back out of the grass and into the open so I could get a different angle for a clean shot.
Well he had other ideas. Rather than go where he should go he decided to hop right up in my lap. Now I'm sure that would have made a great video with me trying to squirm around and free the frog (that was now falling between my legs) while not squashing him flat. He was moving a little too fast for me to catch him with my left hand while holding the camera in my right.

And then he disappeared. He just vanished. We never knew where he went, but you can be sure I was soon standing upright and checking things out considering I had on a pair of rather loose-fitting shorts at the time and I wasn't ready for any sudden surprises. Now I'm not afraid of frogs or anything like that, but in my opinion there are certain limits that don't need to be crossed in this communing with nature stuff.