It’s hard to sneak up on a frog.
Frogs are so finely attuned to predator threats that the possibility of sneaking up on a frog are almost nil. The moment they sense the movement of your body, which unavoidably makes a huge silhouette against the brighter background, they jump. Likewise if they feel the vibration of your footsteps, or hear you make a bit of noise, brush a fly away from your face, unfasten the velcro pocket to your binoculars case, step on a twig, or pull out your camera.
Perhaps they even jump when you think an excited thought, like “Oh! I see a frog on that log.”
This time of year, early autumn, the result of trying to sneak up on a frog basking on dry land, a log or rock next to a pond is almost always one of two things. One — you hear a plop and see ripples on the water. End of story. Two — you hear a itty bitty tiny squeak toy noise, and then hear a plop, and see ripples on the water. End of story. As soon as they dive in, they are under the leaves and gone from sight.
I can’t blame them. There’s scores of creatures in Lincoln Woods who can and do eat frog eggs, pollywogs and grown frogs: Herons, Crows, Ducks, Geese, Hawks, Owls. Blue Jays, Kingfishers, Chipmunks, Skunks, Foxes, Raccoons, Opossums, Water Shrews, Coyotes, Weasels, Dogs, Cats, Garter Snakes, Ribbon Snakes, Hognose Snakes, Water Snakes, Bass, Catfish, Snapping Turtles, Painted Turtles, Sliders, Dragonfly larvae, and leeches (although leeches don’t actually eat the frog whole, sucking it’s blood dry more or less has the same effect.) Even frogs will eat frogs, as long as the one doing the eating is bigger than the one being eaten. They never get a break. Oh yes, humans too.
I only ate frog legs once, at French Restaurant when I was 17 and out to dinner for my father’s birthday. He was always encouraging my gastronomic adventuring. From what I can recall the fried frog legs was mostly about the garlic, or was that the snails? Either way. The thought of catching, killing, processing and cooking a frog sounds completely unappealing to me, aside from which there are plenty of other better ways to use garlic liberally.
I’d rather take photos of frogs, or when I’m really lucky videos of them singing their mating calls. Or just sit and listen to them on a dark early summer night by a pond in the woods by myself.
Their songs entrance me. When they are chorusing at night it’s like getting a sound healing. The sounds go right through my body and shake loose any notion that I’m somehow separate from nature. As I listen to them in stillness I become, as the ancestors say, become “a real human being.”
Also, to get that daytime photo of a frog, you have to really slow down and become as mindful as Thich Nhat Hanh doing a walking meditation, or maybe even more mindful than that. Walking in the woods for me, is at its heart, a kind of devotional meditation and what I’ve learned is, the slower I go, the deeper I go.
As for photographing them, another thing is I suppose I like a challenge. I’m just working with my iPhone 13 Pro. Pretty good as cellphone cameras go, but not much good for zooming in on small things from a distance. It requires a cooperative subject, which generally speaking frogs are not, with a few exceptions, which I’ll get to momentarily.
The exceptions to frog photo-shyness are, to my knowledge three, or four.
First, a frog can be frozen in terror. I’ve discovered a few frogs while meandering through the woods and seeing one hop away milliseconds before being trod upon by my feet. It’s the hop that gives them away, but, you have to see where it lands, or it has to be relatively big, or it has to make a second hop, which is probably a fatal mistake with a fox or coyote. Once they freeze their camouflage can make them disappear in the leaf litter. Especially Spring Peepers and Wood Frogs.
Second, shining a bright light in its eyes at night, according to the Illustrated Art of Manliness, which goes on to describe how to catch them, though it doesn’t detail to what ends. I didn’t learn this by reading the guide. It was simply a side effect of using a headlamp to walk out of the woods at night. I turned my head towards the pond, where I heard frogs and all these little pairs of bright orbs appeared. Their eyes are reflective. Apparently they freeze in response to the light as well, or maybe not, as I’ve done this and they just keep on croaking or chorusing.
Third, frogs, specifically chorusing frogs, are in mating season and have pretty much only one thing on their mind, which would be attracting and or finding a mate. If they’ve found a good spot on a tree trunk and are in a position to attract a mate, they won’t budge. But you have to be careful with finding frogs this way. One night during a June chorus of Gray Tree Frogs, there were scores of them, all singing loudly together for 5 minutes at a time I got some pretty good photos of a Gray Tree Frog singing. But the next day my ears were ringing as if I’d been to a rock concert. They are pretty loud, 108 decibels, or as loud as a lawn mower.
Fourth, and this is rare. The frog doesn’t know you are there. It happened only twice in four years. Once I was directly behind the frog, about ten feet away. When I took one step to the left to get a view of the side of it, game over, “Plop!” The other time, I was out of sight and so slowly moved my head into a position to see, and there it was, floating in the water, looking like water. Just the eyes bulging out above the water line told me I was looking at a frog.
If you find you have a desire to sneak up on frogs, here is my advice. Be prepared. Go slow. Be respectful. Have a sense of humor. Give yourself time. Let yourself be amazed, amused and grateful.
Preliminaries
I wear insect repellent clothing and if the gnats or mosquitoes are about I use some insect repellant. I can’t afford to get Lyme disease from ticks, or West Nile virus from mosquitoes, but more to the point of sneaking up on frogs, I can’t be swatting my arms around at the wrong moment. But if you choose to use a repellant, do not touch the frog. Or if you’ve had sunscreen, hand lotion, fancy soap, perfume, etc on your hands — don’t touch! Frogs absorb poisons through their skin.
Frogs are having a tough enough time. They’ve got habitat loss (homelessness), and habitat degradation (inequity), infectious diseases spread around the globe by human activities including parasitic fungus, Ranavirus, Upper respiratory diseases, invasive species, chemical contaminants, and the climate change crap shoot. They breathe through their skin, so whatever touches them goes straight into their bodies. Don’t touch them, or if you do, wear sterile glove and do so only briefly.
Also don’t piss or crap near their water. Your pathogen organisms, your excreted medications, and your excess nitrogen are all bad news for frogs.
Don’t bring your dog.
All I am saying is give frogs a chance.
Have everything you may need ready and accessible: your glasses, you camera and your binoculars, for instance.
Know where the frog ponds are. Smaller spring fed ponds or vernal pools are the usual place. Know which ones you can get close to the edge. Choose one that has logs and rocks just above the water surface. You usually can figure it out by listening in the late afternoon and evening for their songs.
Sneaking Up on Frogs
Twenty yard before you approach the pond, stop. Get slow. Slow down everything, movement, emotions, thoughts. Get present. Open your senses. Once you do that, approach super slowly. Don’t make noise, don’t make vibrations, take no more than one or two steps at a time, try to approach from behind a tree trunk or bush.
Look, look, look. You can be looking right at a frog, especially the smaller ones, and not see it. It looks like a bit of wood, or a leaf.
If one sees you and makes an alarm call, “Squeak!” Lower your expectation. The other frogs are now on the lookout for the threat.
Here is where humor comes in handy. I once slowly stalked a frog on a log in a vernal pool. I got closer, and closer, slowly. It took me about five minutes to get close enough to realize it was an old broken off branch on the log, shaped just like a frog from the back view. Brilliant frog, silly human.
Be amused, when you hear “Squeak!” And “Plop!” Especially when there are 10 in a row, and you didn’t see a single of them.
Be prepared to spend a lot of time. My usual frog forays last at least an hour, sometimes up to four hours.
Be amazed, when you get lucky and get close enough to see the frog.
Be respectful, don’t molest the frog. Regard it with wonder. It has after all survived a gauntlet of mouths, eaten a ton of bugs (and possibly other frogs), and will spend the winter buried in mud, only to emerge, mate, reproduce, eat and survive in world that has it in for frogs.
Finally, be grateful to the frog for showing itself to you, because really, after all, that’s what has happened.
providenceferal 