Dany and I walk though the vineyards most days and each spring are delighted that a pair of toads (they may be frogs ..) return to the same watering hole each year. We only usually see their nostrils breaking the water, but yesterday I got a photo of one sitting on the wall of the water hole. My first wildlife photograph :
@Julie Stewart, That looks like a bullfrog. I have them in my goldfish pond. Nice picture. Did you kiss him?
I never understood a single word he said...but I helped him drink his wine...and you know he had some mighty fine wine! Nice photo @Julie Stewart. He really does look like he's thinking on something.
How nice to see you had a little visitor like us! Two nights ago I went outside to my little backyard for we live on the first floor of our apt. building. There it was a little frog or toad...I never saw anything like it. I quickly took pictures of it, but I don't think it came out for my camera is not behaving good these days...guess it's the battery...but there it was sitting in the backyard facing it's back to me then it heard me and it came around and faced me with it's back to the wall of the brick wall that encases our backyard and it gazed at me as I went in and out of our apt. getting my camera to take pictures. It has no flash so this night shot got very little going for it as I was shooting it I couldn't see it, but shot it anyway hoping to get it all fixed online one day. This never ever happened before. We live about 3 blocks from a stream called Kalihi Stream, so I don't know how this little fellow got in my back yard. It was golden and chubby like a frog and not a toad...but I don't know if it was a frog or a toad. I'm currently looking it up.
It is fairly easy to tell the differencee between a toad and a frog, if you take the time to look closely at the little fellow. The one in your picture looks like a frog to me also, @Julie Stewart . Toads are like a frog that is very overweight (think of Jabba the Hut in Star Wars) and instead of a sleek streamlined body, they have a very round, squat one , and often have little bumps and even look wrinkly sometimes. The body usually has more speckles than a frog also. The little spots do look kind of like warts, hence the saying not to touch a toad or you will get warts, obviously NOT true, but the spots do look like warts. Toads like cool areas to live but do not have to be near water as much as a frog does. When I was young, we used to have a fat old toad that showed up each year in the back yard. I named him "Dale Pufferbelly", and he was a friendly little fellow. Here is a picture of a toad, so you can compare it with your picture, Julie and see the difference.
@Patsy Faye - not his navel ..... maybe me creeping up on him, he jumped into the water seconds after this shot. @Shirley Martin - ahh, a bullfrog, that intrigued me and I googled frog calls and they don't sound like the bullfrog call I just heard on YouTube. They have a much more song-like sound. And YES, of course I kissed him if you're asking about Dany .... @Diane Lane - thank you, I enjoyed that, never heard it before.
@Babs Hunt - he's maybe thinking about that fine wine that Jeremiah isn't sharing .... that's a very appropriate line from the song as the picture was taken in the vineyards! @Joe Riley - how do you find these things? I love this last one best of all so far. @Krissttina Isobe - I hope you get a photo next time. My camera's not brilliant - but it does the job. And it was us who were visiting them - we try to see them every time we pass this spot. They probably say to each other, "Uh-oh; Julie and Dany are here again, quick, dive!"
@Yvonne Smith - wow, thank you for all that information. They really are different. That handsome fellow is exactly like a toad (although I didn't know whether it was frog or toad at the time) who spent the winter living on my doorstep when I lived down south in Provence. There was a space between the door to the house and the shutter/security door and he spent the winter months of all of the five years I lived in that house in that space. Our wellingtons boots were stored there and one morning, as I pulled them on at the beginning of a dog walk, I thought that I had left a sock inside the boot - the dogs were running off, so I pulled the boot on and ran after them. When I got home and took the boots off I put my hand inside to pull the sock out and felt the toad. I was sure he'd been squashed by me .... I lay the boot on it's side and gently tipped it up. He walked out, looked at me, a took up his usual place in the corner. He must have spent the night in the boot. But how tough to survive that...
@Yvonne Smith So is it the frogs that live in water, or at least hop into the rainwater filled pots on my balcony? If I'm not paying attention, they can certainly startle me. Shannon likes to drink out of those pots, and I'm sure she's encountered one or two of them. I get them on both the back porch and also the balcony, as well as in the yards, of course. We get the tiny dark green or black frogs here. One time years ago, when I brought the newspaper in on a rainy day, it was in a plastic sleeve, so I tossed it onto the tile kitchen floor, figuring I'd mop up the excess water later. I stepped away for a few minutes and saw my cat transfixed. A bunch of the tiny frogs had gotten into the plastic sleeve, and were hopping all over the kitchen floor.
Well see the pics I took of the frog or toad that was a beautiful golden chubby little reptile is so invisible it's pitiful...I'm checking into it now...could be the batteries. I put in the real cheap ones and the pics show up this way. Bought some expensive long lasting batteries and pics were crystal clear...oh well, here is the frog or toad which is a little round upon the white painted wall of our backyard apt. Sorry and you know nature gives you pics when it feels like it too...so at least I got this and I was yelling for my Mom to see it and see it she did too!