{"id":1061,"date":"2010-05-24T15:31:22","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T21:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2010-05-24T22:54:54","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T04:54:54","slug":"amphibians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=1061","title":{"rendered":"Amphibians"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Young Rana berlandieri<\/strong> with last of its tail showing.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of our wildlife management goals was to provide habitat for amphibians to reproduce.\u00a0 This required permanent water (no natural water on the place is permanent) with the right combination of water quality and vegetation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have previously photographed these Rio Grande Leopard Frog tadpoles in the lily pond, but haven’t been able to photograph them in all stages.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Leopard frog tadpoles in lily pond, 2005<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week, I saw quite a few whose hind legs were just showing, but could not get a good photo.\u00a0\u00a0 They were “walking” a little on the bottom (we have two-foot-wide ledges about one foot\u00a0 deep on the sides of the lily pond) but still swam mostly with their tails.\u00a0\u00a0 This afternoon, this fellow was lounging on the surface when I saw him, and stayed there long enough for me to get this picture.\u00a0 When the frog finally spooked, it kicked hard with both hind legs.\u00a0 The remaining tail now serves as a nutritional source–but not for much longer.<\/p>\n

Because of our generally dry habitat, we don’t have many amphibian species here–one (or maybe two, especially in wet years) species of cricket frog, this leopard frog, in very wet years the occasional bullfrog (our pond is too small to offer enough food for bullfrogs for long) and the Gulf Coast Toad.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Gulf Coast Toad, Bufo valliceps<\/strong>, in secondary drainage after rain<\/em><\/p>\n

Amphibian populations are declining world-wide for a number of reasons–they’re\u00a0 thought to be affected by climate change as well as loss of habitat and water pollution.\u00a0\u00a0 We are very glad that our local populations have adapted to artificial supplemental water in the dry years, and that in wet years small populations surviving elsewhere return to the 80 acres.<\/p>\n

The water garden that has proved successful for amphibian reproduction is replenished with collected rainwater from our roofs and planted with a mix of native and near-native (from wetter parts of the state) iris and water lilies to provide habitat for the aquatic species (not only amphibians but insects) and waterside animals (like the Red-lined Ribbon Snake featured last post.)\u00a0\u00a0 These plants keep the water cleaner and cooler in summer as well as providing shelter and (for some species) food.<\/p>\n

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Young Rana berlandieri with last of its tail showing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,48,6,4],"tags":[71,62,17,13,44,23,70,30],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activities","category-climate-change","category-water","category-wildlife","tag-activities","tag-amphibians","tag-animal-behavior","tag-beauty","tag-documentation","tag-observation","tag-photography","tag-wildlife-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1067,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}