I can’t think of any other title that would do my recent frogging experience justice!
After becoming terminally bored over the last few weeks, I had to get out of the house and snoop around at night to see to what extent puddles had formed following the frequent storm activity much of SE QLD has experienced. Fortunately, David; a friend of mine also wanted ‘out’, so we headed out to a few spots where I thought we might find a bit of frog activity.
We headed to an area near Maroochydore Airport in Melaleuca/wallum bushland adjacent to an industrial estate, and sure enough, we could hear a distant chorus of several frog species. These were the graceful treefrog (Litoria gracilenta), striped rocketfrog (L. nasuta), naked treefrog (L. rubella), eastern sedgefrog (L. fallax) and the wallum froglet (Crinia tinnula), all calling amongst vegetation and floating leaf matter surrounding a large ephemeral body of water.
We also came across many cane toads (Rhinella marina) along the dirt track, which provided a good opportunity to familiarise David with differences between cane toads and native frog look-a-likes.
Then low and behold, we found two scarlet-sided pobblebonks (Limnodynastes terraereginae), which has been confused for cane toads elsewhere!
After visiting two other sites with similar frog life, we headed home.
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Last night I met up with Ed Meyer, frog expert and my former co-supervisor during my Honours research project to begin frog monitoring at a new reserve purchased by the local council. Some sites within the reserve were more pristine than others, however each site contained it’s own little surprises.
It was a long night with many photos and call recordings taken, so I’ll just provide a summary in photos.
As I finish this post, I’ve received another invitation to go frogging on Thursday, so stay tuned for that one!