Florida Frog Fandango UPDATED (that means corrected.. ahem)

I don't usually start off or end with "bad" photos here at Pure Florida.

Actually, I try to keep them out of the middle too, but this post includes two technically bad shots that are simply to give some idea of the frognacious night we had here at PFHQ recently.

So, photo number one below is dark, far from the subjects, fuzzy,and there are rain drops on my lens,  but it does hint at the Anuramazing scene down at the "pond" Sunday night.

Photo number 5, later in this post, has the same flaws, but serves the same purpose.

If you click and enlarge it, you can have some fun seeking out frogs on the shore, in the water, and in the willows.

Look for white eyes ...

...sometimes only one white eye ...

... frogs wink.

 We're here! We're here!

 I'm calling these green tree frogs, even though the spots threw me at first, since most of the green tree frogs on my window panes at night are uniformly green. The UF guide mentioned golden spots on the back though, and my audio sounds like their green frog audio online ... so, that's my story and I am sticking to it like a tree frog on a window.

... Until convinced otherwise ....

Which happened almost immediately of course. This just validates the teacher proverb about, "Your first guess is probably the correct one."
Before publishing I went back and forth between barking and green treefrog for the ID. These frogs looked a lot stouter than my svelte greens on the window screens, but they were all puffed up and the singing sounded mostly like greens to my ears and barkers can be green while greens can be spotted.

So I went with an unconfident green diagnosis, knowing that Swampy and others would come to my rescue just like Doug does when I post a bug that I have not identified correctly.

Mistakes like this come from creating posts on your lunch hour ... 

(I writing interim biology assessments for the county this week).

... and hitting PUBLISH POST without too much fact checking.

Sorry about that, Chief.

 I walked down to the pond in total darkness and in a light rain with my spotlight turned off.

 The sound was all encompassing, you could hear it so well inside the house a hundred feet upslope that my wife thought the windows in the bedroom were open.

They were not.

Checkout the sound wave distortion in the pond surface surrounding Mr. Bubblethroat in the picture above.

The video below is mostly an audio experience, so here are a few tips.

1. First, turn the volume all the way up on your computer ... as if you were going to listen to Sweet Home Alabama.
2. Expect nothing but darkness and beautiful frog song for the first bit of the video. I started filming without light to capture their uninterrupted song as I walked through the woods. Sometimes they stop or slow down when you turn on a light and I wanted to record them as they were.
3. There are moments when the camera struggles (or was it me) to focus in the dim light of my dying spotlight, so hang in there and don't give up during those moments.