Bull Frog

Bull Frogs are large frogs, with a call that gives them their name.  

Their backs and upper sides are olive green in color.  Females are bigger than males.

Their eardrums (tympani) are easy to see.  They are the circular marks behind the eyes.  On a female, the eardrums are about the same size as the eye, while on a male the tympani are bigger.

Their bellies are lighter in color with yellow spots.

Their upper lip is olive green while their lower lip is often lighter.

Bull Frogs can grow up to a pound or more, and are hunted for their back legs.  They are most often a source of food in the southern United States.

American Toad

This is an American Toad.

You can tell because it has warts on top of each spot on its back. This is a most common variety of toad in North America, and one that most people are familiar with.

The species name for the American Toad is Anaxyrus americanus.

Anaxyrus is a from Greek.   "Anax" stands for king, and "yrus" may stand for tail.  (That's the best I can tell you, based on the research I've done.)

Toads don't have tails as adults, but they do as tadpoles.  Americanus is from Latin, meaning America, of course.

By the way, toads do not give you warts!

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.

Evidence of Wild Animals

I am a scouter, and one of my favorite requirements to help the scouts with is to identify evidence of at least 10 kinds of wild animals.  I love seeing the boys out in the woods, noticing things they've never noticed before, and getting excited about how much they can deduce on their own.

The first morning started off well right at the campsite.  The boys found this torpid amphibian, and some deer guard hairs.  We also heard several bird calls and saw evidence of squirrels having feasted on nuts.

Next we went out on a hike.  We took to the miles of woods and fields on our scout camp property.  We had 2 adults and 22 scouts.  It seemed like everyone was noticing everything - tracks, scat, calls, and animal homes.

The rank requirement says to find evidence of animal life, including birds,

mammals,

reptiles,

fish, and mollusks.

The most exciting find of the day was a deer carcass.  The boys swarmed it like bees - "Wow!" - "Cool!!!"  We guessed at what might have brought it down.  Disease?  Bow hunters?  Coyotes?  We had heard them (the coyotes that is) yipping and wailing in the night.  They might have done the deed earlier in the year.

It seemed like everywhere we looked, we found some new critter, or part of one!

(Note:  No crawfish were injured in the production of this blog post.  This one, who lost his claw, was already dead before we found it.)

Photo credit:  Jason

All of the animals and evidence were left where they had been found, even though this practice was a hard sell for some of the scouts.

My personal favorite on this hike was evidence left behind by a yellow-bellied sapsucker (isn't that just fun to say?), as seen on this tree trunk, where it "drilled" these holes to get at the sap.  Pretty cool.

We got caught in the rain near the end of the hike, and had to shelter for a while under a fortuitously nearby structure, but it was still a wonderful hike.  I think we all had our interest in the outdoor world rekindled.