The Perfect Frog Summer, Perfect Frog Pond, and Perfect Frog Drain Basin.

If you build it...

Go ahead, count em.

Florida is a wet place so when we comment or complain about the rain, it usually means there has been one extreme or the other.

This year, especially this Summer, constant almost daily rain here at PFHQ was the norm.

That actually IS the norm if those daily rains are the brief but possibly intense afternoon thunderstorms.

What was noticeable this year were full days of rain, one after another.

Painting, beach trips, and other dry weather events stayed on the "To Do" list.

The pond true edge is where the cypress trees are. At its fullest, it filled the area between the water in the foreground and the true edge.All the grass to the right was underwater...up into the trees.

My real pond, not the plastic Amphibisauna pictured at the top of this post, ... my REAL pond lept up over the dock and crept into the surrounding forest. 

If you were a frog and your froggy real estate agent showed you this ... and
then said, "Oh croak by the croak way, there croak are no croak fish in this pond croak other than croak delicious mosquito fish minnows croak.", you would snap this deal up, jump on it, and hop to it before this perfect home slipped away.

The pond reached levels I haven't seen since the awesome hurricane year of 2004 ... except none of that water was from a big event hurricane rain.

It was all from daily rains and it created an almost ideal situation for my amphibian friends.

Why?

Reason 1: 

My pond is fishless except for a blue million Gambusia minnows (Mosquitofish) a perfect food for Bull, Leopard, and Pig Frogs. 

Reason 2:

No predatory fish like Blue Gills and Largemouth Bass mean more tadpoles and frog adults survive to breed.

Reason 3:

The pond has substantial underwater vegetation and floating mats of the same. Perfect for hiding, resting, and ambushing insects and minnows.

Reason 4:

Shade.

Ultraviolet radiation is rough on all of us, but especially amphibians. Almost the entire edge of the pond is shaded by cypress, willow, and buttonbush. 

On top of this, the overflow portion of the pond has crept into the surrounding forest creating a perfect wet shady amphibinirvana situation. They moved into the forest edge as soon as it flooded.

So why, with all this perfect habitat, why is the tiny 3 foot wide pond in the first picture jammed up with young bullfrogs?

I don't know for sure, but I love it.

The purpose of that pond is to catch rain from the roof valley above and then send overflow through a LONG black drain pipe to the pond.

It is stocked with mosquito fish and functions as a mosquito deathtrap as female mosquitoes unwittingly lay their eggs into water filled with willing and voracious larvae eating gambusia.

It is 100 feet from the real pond, so I do find it funny to see so many REAL frogs hanging out there.

Just a gift I suppose, from the perfect frog summer.

CUBANS INVADE CEDAR KEY! EVERYONE GRAB A ZIPLOC BAG!

The tiny island of Cedar Key, Florida has been invaded by Cubans, not by the good people of Cuba, but by their frogs.

Earlier this year, mysterious tadpoles showed up in an open rain barrel near our Cedar Key School Aquaponics System. I noticed a raft of frog eggs one Spring day when I stopped to feed the gambusia minnows that live in the barrel for mosquito control.
I assumed they were tree frog tadpoles since to lay eggs in the 50 gallon barrel they would have to climb up the side just to get to the water.
I wasn't thinking Cuban Tree Frogs though.

However, when these large and unusual tadpoles showed up, I became suspicious. Every native tree frog tadpole I've ever seen has been tiny and dark. These were so radically different, that I had the students catch them. We then placed them in a tank with an always hungry bluegill who dispatched them post haste.

Last year's Environmental Science class, which is this year's Biology class, put out tree frog monitoring "traps" last year after an adult Cuban tree frog turned up in our aquaponics system.

We've monitored these sporadically, but have only caught a few natives.

So, it figures that with about 10 PVC tree frog monitoring traps spread around school, the second adult Cuban tree frog turned up in a flower pot in the aquaponic system.

We were down at the lab and I had groups of kids doing various aquaculture related jobs. This always looks a little like controlled chaos, as multiple groups need me for this or that and there's a lot of "Mr. P, what about ..." and "Mr. P, where is...", anyway, you get the picture, it's busy.

Still, some sounds cut through the cacophony and a squeal is one of those sounds. From the group planting lettuce outside in the aquaponics system, there was a squeal and I heard the word "frog".
So, of course I went to investigate, already suspecting what I would find.

Sure enough, the kids had found a Cuban tree frog in a stack of 3 inch black plastic flower pots. It was a little cold shocked on that chilly morning and pretty easy to capture.
I explained what he was and why we could not let him go.
When I got to the part about euthanizing him, there were some "Ohhh, ahhhh poor thing", but the lessons on invasive species must have sunk in, because they seemed to understand.
Actually I'm glad they have compassion for the individual frog, while at the same time realizing the need to control invasives like the Cuban tree frog.

That's where I am too.
I love frogs, love their sounds, their big eyes, their palette of colors and sizes.
But this frog had to die and the most humane way for that to happen was a trip to the freezer in a Ziploc bag.

Besides the size and tan color, another characteristic that makes the Cuban different from our natives is the size of the sticky toe pads.
They're huge!
Every time I see them my brain flips back to the 1953 "War of The Worlds" movie.

The "hand" of a dead Martian invader from the 1953 movie ... see what I mean?

Are these really from Cuba, or are they from Olympus Mons?
One wonders ...

To help YOU identify the Cuban, here's a size reference photo.
They are big for tree frogs and mostly tan ... not a common color with our natives.

A dorsal view.

And finally, an extended view.

There is some yellow around the thigh and groin area.

Keep an eye out for these invaders and if you catch one, be strong and euthanize it.

You can get much more information and even send in photos for an official identification BEFORE YOU KILL A TREE FROG at this excellent University of Florida website.

...and keep watching the skies.

Five Year Pond Check Up ... Frogdiggity!

If you go way back to 2009, you can see how this tiny pond in my oak-palm hammock came to be.

(Dear North of the St. Mary's River friends, in Florida, a "hammock" is a shady forest habitat of mostly hardwoods)

Two days ago, Bear, Coquina, and I were taking a walk through the hammock, enjoying its shade and fresh deer smells. As we approached the little pond, I could see 7 leopard frogs sitting on the rim.

The pups spooked them of course, but I came back alone a little while later and some of them were still hanging out.

I always place a stick of some kind in water holes like this, so the skinks, anoles, and other crawlies have a way of exiting when they fall in.
Bums me out to find a drowned lizard in something I created.

This was the lone swimmer.
Lone frog swimmer that is ... A small school of Gambusia minnows patrol the depths gobbling up mosquito eggs and larvae as soon as the mosquitoes deposit them.
I have no mosquitoes at my place and I'm beyond poison spewing mosquito control routes (Thankfully!) ...
I give credit for the lack of mosquitoes in this very wet 2014 summer to the many Gambusia inhabited water features on my 10 acres.
They are ravenous skeeter beaters ... with no harmful side effects.

This frog was "one with the log" and never moved as I moved around to get pics.

I was surprised, but happy to see so many frogs using the tiny hammock watering hole. Surprised, because 40 feet away was the big "real" pond, and happy because, I don't usually catch anybody in the act of using it, although I'm sure it acts as a water source for the deer and other critters that live or cross through PFHQ.

After air, there's really nothing more important than water, and its such a simple thing to add to any landscape. This little pond shell was about 10 bucks in 2009 and needs no pump to do it's job.


(The Gambusia are tough as nails and can survive low oxygen, plus there are just a few in there)... of course, now that I think about it, I have tons of Anacharis in another water feature that I could add to this little pond.
A little shady, but they are great little oxygen producers so it's worth adding a few sprigs.

No telling who might show up if you diversify your place by adding any of the 3 biggies:
1. Food
   2. Shelter
  3. Water

Which reminds me, the brush piles have all rotted away so I need to work on number 2.