Mystery Frog

I'm not sure about the identification of this little frog. I went to this excellent site, and also looked through the Ashton's excellent fieldguide, "Handbook Of Reptiles And Amphibians Of Florida". I'm still stumped. Nothing really jumped out at me as a definite ID.

I've been cleaning up the "garden" lately, pulling old useless fence and bits of junk that have slowly built up in weedy corners. I seem to have an endless supply of sun rotted black flower pots tucked here and there. The frog was in a 5 gallon bucket of old scallop shells that I was saving for my aquaculture filter. When I flooded the bucket to rinse the leaves and debris out, up swam this little guy. My assumption is he was passing the winter there.

I had the camera set on macro so I could get in close and the frog kept jumping from my hand to my shirt as I focused. At one point he lept and I thought I had lost him somewhere in the grass at my feet. I looked and looked, but could not locate him.

Then I looked at my camera.

He had jumped onto the camera and squeezed in between the lens hood and the actual lens, so I had to unscrew the hood carefully to recapture him.

I let him go without identifying him. I don't know if he's a very young version of some frog I know or if he's one of the handful of very small frogs that inhabit the southeast like Cricket Frogs or the Florida Chorus Frog.

Whoever he was, it was a nice diversion from pulling fence and garden junk.