Since Stephen Gingold is confined to a sunless Friday due to an allergy to anti-tick meds, I thought I’d post a couple of pics in absentia on his behalf. These guys are Rio Grande Leopard Frogs, and have recently taken up residence in our backyard pond. Most folks don’t realize that even in the desert, where there is water, there are usually frogs.
Photography and Travel, specifically adventure travel and backpacking in remote North America, give me an excuse to stay outside. If kayaks, bikes, backpacks, Jeeps, archeology, geology and wildlife can be included, all the better. Having spent my life working in the fashion and photography industries, I love the unusual, the spectacular, and the beautiful. God has given us a wonderful world in which to live, and I try to open others’ eyes to its wonders. I have shared nearly 50 years of this indescribable wonder with my wife, Jodie, and we go everywhere together. I hope you will share some of our journey with us.
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6 thoughts on “Frog Friday”
Good looking frogs, Bob. I’d love to have a pond and some residents in our yard. I hope that yours don’t dry out in the Texas heat leaving these froggies with nowhere to go.
No worries. Our pond is man-made, and has no natural inlet. We keep it filled from our well.
When I was a kid, our house was near a creek, and I would go to sleep at night listening to the frogs sing (with no A/C all the windows were always open). These frogs sing up a storm, and reminds me of those days.
It didn’t happen this year, I am not sure why… maybe we didn’t have enough rain early on, but most years our tiny Spring Peepers would chorus at night and we could go to sleep to their music. At other times gray tree frogs offer the same. I envy you having yours on a regular and lasting basis.
Such wonderful photos! Even with the water and vegetation, these look like desert frogs: a bit more gray than Steve’s, and strangely reminiscent of the landscape.
It seems you have a little extra water these days. I read about the flooding on Alamito Creek, and the unfortunate fate of the drivers who dared (or mistook the flow of) the low-water crossings. My friends in the hill country taught me the meaning of the phrase ‘watered-in,’ and the need to stop when I found water flowing over the road. The authorities keep trying to convince Houston drivers to do the same, but someone gets caught in every flooding rain.
The loss of life in Marfa on Alamito Creek was unfortunate, and probably needless. That creekbed is about 12-15 feet deep where it runs through town, and is always bone dry. That much rain in a short time causes flash flooding, and many local residents have never had to deal with fast-rising water in that creek, and especially at night.
Unfortunately, this has been going on for a long time. In a really good book about this area, “A Homesteader’s Story…Big Bend,” by J. O. Langford, he describes his trip by mule-drawn wagon from Marathon to the Rio Grande River, to his new homestead, and how he and his family were trying to cross a rain-swollen creek after dark, and no matter how hard they whipped the mules, they would not budge. They camped beside the creek and next morning discovered that the “creek” was nearly 20 feet deep at that crossing and they would have all drowned in the flash flood were it not for the instinct of the mules…proof that we would all be better off if we listened to the wisdom of others, even mules.
The Rio Grande River where it cuts through Big Bend National Park usually runs at a level of about 2 feet, and a flow of less than 100 cubic feet per second (cfs). Earlier this week it was at a level of over 13 feet and a flow of over 7200 cfs.
Needless to say, the drought out here has been broken, at least temporarily, and the desert has not been so green in a couple of years.
texasflashdude 
Good looking frogs, Bob. I’d love to have a pond and some residents in our yard. I hope that yours don’t dry out in the Texas heat leaving these froggies with nowhere to go.
No worries. Our pond is man-made, and has no natural inlet. We keep it filled from our well.
When I was a kid, our house was near a creek, and I would go to sleep at night listening to the frogs sing (with no A/C all the windows were always open). These frogs sing up a storm, and reminds me of those days.
It didn’t happen this year, I am not sure why… maybe we didn’t have enough rain early on, but most years our tiny Spring Peepers would chorus at night and we could go to sleep to their music. At other times gray tree frogs offer the same. I envy you having yours on a regular and lasting basis.
Such wonderful photos! Even with the water and vegetation, these look like desert frogs: a bit more gray than Steve’s, and strangely reminiscent of the landscape.
It seems you have a little extra water these days. I read about the flooding on Alamito Creek, and the unfortunate fate of the drivers who dared (or mistook the flow of) the low-water crossings. My friends in the hill country taught me the meaning of the phrase ‘watered-in,’ and the need to stop when I found water flowing over the road. The authorities keep trying to convince Houston drivers to do the same, but someone gets caught in every flooding rain.
The loss of life in Marfa on Alamito Creek was unfortunate, and probably needless. That creekbed is about 12-15 feet deep where it runs through town, and is always bone dry. That much rain in a short time causes flash flooding, and many local residents have never had to deal with fast-rising water in that creek, and especially at night.
Unfortunately, this has been going on for a long time. In a really good book about this area, “A Homesteader’s Story…Big Bend,” by J. O. Langford, he describes his trip by mule-drawn wagon from Marathon to the Rio Grande River, to his new homestead, and how he and his family were trying to cross a rain-swollen creek after dark, and no matter how hard they whipped the mules, they would not budge. They camped beside the creek and next morning discovered that the “creek” was nearly 20 feet deep at that crossing and they would have all drowned in the flash flood were it not for the instinct of the mules…proof that we would all be better off if we listened to the wisdom of others, even mules.
The Rio Grande River where it cuts through Big Bend National Park usually runs at a level of about 2 feet, and a flow of less than 100 cubic feet per second (cfs). Earlier this week it was at a level of over 13 feet and a flow of over 7200 cfs.
Needless to say, the drought out here has been broken, at least temporarily, and the desert has not been so green in a couple of years.
Meanwhile, up in Houston, the usual suspects are up to their usual tricks. “It won’t happen to me” can be such a tempting thought.