Northern Leopard Frog

Frogs always leap away from me before I even know they are there, so I don't usually run into them or have much chance to photograph them, but yesterday was different.  There were two, and one scurried away over the edge of the stream bank.  The other one didn't go quite so far.

I was delighted to get any kind of picture at all, since amphibians are not my specialty.

Once home, I found that I had photographed a leopard frog.  They are pretty common in Iowa.  Leopard frogs have roundish spots scattered across their backs, and stripes on their legs.  To a novice like me, they look a lot like the more rare pickerel frogs, but pickerels have two fairly symmetric rows of square or rectangular spots running down their backs.

The light-colored line running from his eye to his back hip is called a dorsolateral fold. They have a similar line running from under their eye to their front shoulder.

These frogs are edible, but make sure you know what you have before you eat it, as some frogs are not.