CalArti

Over the past few weeks I’ve been remarking on the little toads that seem to have popped up everywhere. After a little bit of web research, I’m pretty sure they are Fowler’s Toads. The individuals I’ve been seeing are all a bit small – most an inch or les sin size – but I assume that’s because ethey are just very young.

I’ve been seeing these creatures in the Allegan Game Area, and since they like woods and fields with sandy soil, that seems like a perfect habitat for them. During today’s visit I saw 5 individuals within a few moments of arriving at a sandy field. Here’s one shot:

Fowler’s Toad

Sunday. Walking back towards the car after wandering through he fields north of the Kalamazoo River, I look down at a small ribbon the ground, barely clear of the front of my boot. The intricate pattern on the speckled band is intriguing, and I wonder who left a snippet of a patterned shoe lace here.

And then the band suddenly moves – it’s a tiny Hognose snake, barely six inches long and lucky that my foot didn’t fall smack on it.

The little serpent proved to be an interesting photographic subject. Most of the hognose snakes I’ve seen have been brown with darker spots and a light yellow underside - like this one - but this individual is a gray tan with black spots. The snake was patient with me as I snapped a few portraits from different angles, and then I finally left it alone. It slowly made its way along the sandy soil, and was last seen sliding into a patch of thick ferns.

If it can avoid becoming a meal to some larger predator, it should have an ample supply of crickets and grasshoppers these next few weeks. Let’s hope it grows to be a formidable serpent - and I’ll hope to meet it again someday.

Sunday turned out to be a good day for herpetological subjects. After leaving the little Hognose Snake I made my way through several fields and finally down to the old farmstead. The mowed field was full of dragonflies, but they all dove low and clung to the stubble that prickled up from the sandy soil – not many opportunities for nice perching shots.

I made my way down to the pond. The water has receded a bit, though there is still open water at least 20 yards in from where the edge of the marsh used to be. Several frogs jumped into the pond as I bumbled down to the water’s edge, but looking down I noticed this green frog already in the water:

I have to admit that I paused for moment before laying down in the muck to get its photo. If you look closely you can spot a few mosquitoes on the frog’s head – though they are pretty much lost in this web-sized image.

After that I hiked back up to the north end of the cleared field. I tried to stay by the edge of the field, where there are still some patches of long grass, but ultimately I got no dragonfly shots. I guess the dragons are telling me to move on.

Anyhow, I did find another small tree frog or toad way up at the north end of the field. I’m seeing these guys all over the place this year. After a bit of digging, I’m reasonably certaint hat these are very small Fowler’s Toads - Bufo fowleri. They must be pretty young because they are typically described as being at least 2 inches long.

One thing about these guys – their camouflage is outstanding. Take your eyes off them for an instant and they are lost and gone.

Finally – one shot with a quarter in it for size reference. The little toad was quite accommodating.

Here it is, late August, and autumn is already sticking her fingers into the pie. Well - two shots form last spring - the wildflower called Spring Beauty

A shot from early May -

And another from very late in the season - May 24th! How long ago does *that* seem…

A young buck at twilight - taken in West Virginia (plenty of deer there!)

Sometimes I can’t think of anything to do. I get out into the woods or the fields, but can’t tell my left hand from my right. I bump along muddy dirt roads or down sandy two tracks, oblivious to the things around me.

I did manage to spot another tiny toad – this one a few hundred yards from the pond where I saw the last one. It was no larger than the other, but was much more animated as it made its way through the dried and cut up grass.

Other than that – one yellow dragon and one red dragon, and that was the whole day Sunday…

When I was a youngster my family lived on the edge of a hill. The land dropped off sharply at our property line, made a quick descent of 30 or 40 feet, and then flattened out again. A small drain ran along the bottom, and on the other side of this drain was the back of a shopping center and a small railroad switchyard. The side of the hill was overgrown with trees and brush. It was also littered with old tires, a junk washing machine, rusting barrels, and other rubbish. My family called that little strip of semi-wild land “The Gully.”

Cricket Frogs were common in The Gully. As children we’d find them regularly in the summer – so regularly that they became a pretty common-place feature of our world. Once or twice I tried to keep a cricket frog in a terrarium – it never worked out. But they were more or less taken for granted back then.

I don’t know when I last saw one.

I thought I saw one last week, but was wrong. I was in the Allegan Forest, by the edge of the New Pond. The water has been receding and now a few feet of mud boarders the pond. A very cooperative green frog has taken to sunning itself in one particular spot. I saw it there and knelt down into the muck to get a snapshot.

A bit of movement caught my eye, and I saw what I thought was a Blanchard’s Cricket Frog. The tiny amphibian was less than an inch long, and I had to get close with my insect macro rig to get a shot of it. Here’s a photo with an SD Memory card for scale:

I was pretty excited about possibly finding one of these now uncommon creatures. But once home I looked at the photo and realized that it was really just a really small toad. I didn’t know smalls could be so small – I guess this one metamorphosed from a really small tadpole.

Here’s a shot of the samll toad toad without the memory card:

Well – the experience brought back some nice memories. The last toad I saw – a few weeks ago – was about the size of a baseball. It did not seem to like the attention that I paid it, and slowly but surely dug itself down into the sandy soil. It just sank in, as if the earth was just water and it could float a bit lower if it wished. It was many time’s the size of this little creature.

Here’sthe green frog (shot the week before) that I was originally going after:

Back in June, when the days were the longest, I’d listen to the robins sing in the dead of night. They would start up around 2:30 AM, first one lonely singer, then another. Dawn was hours away but the birds sang to the darkness, or perhaps to the promised light.

Just as the pre-dawn twilight emerged, other birds joined the song. First cardinals, and then myriad house sparrows with their chatter – not really a song except when hundreds of birds join in. Mourning doves, fox sparrows, finches and chickadees all would join in; at times crows added their dour “caw-caw-caw” to the mix.

This morning I awoke at 2:30. People were talking outside the window, the garage door was open and the light was on. I rushed out, ready to fight, but found no one there. The voices were gone. A cluttered garage basked in the light. Nothing was missing - did I just forget to turn off the light and close the door?

Locking up, I thought to sit back and listen to the robins sing and let the adrenaline ease away. But no bird spoke in the darkness. I had trouble getting back to sleep, and listened in vain until the sun was coming up. The tardy July sun.

Around 6 a few birds picked up the call, and dozen or so voices rose to the morning chorus. Bless them for thier singing, though it was an faint echo of days gone by.

And so – the turning point, again. The sun is already rising later, and soon the mornings will be silent.

Here’s a photo of a prickly pear cactus in bloom. It was taken last year. I had intended to take a photo of one of this summer, but did not realize that the one day in June when I saw them blooming on the barrens was the only day this year I’d see these flowers.

I am standing by the edge of the pond. The vegetation here is thick, and I had to make my way in carefully – the wild raspberries have been mostly washed out by the rising water, but the ones that remain are tall, thick, and full of thorns.

Fresh green grass stalks break the surface of the pond. Maybe it will revert to a marsh again, after all…

A flash of gold catches my eye and I turn to see a serpent, draped on the tall raspberry bushes. She’s almost at eye level – more like chest level – four or five feet above the ground. She seems unconcerned by my presence – a common garter snake. It seems pretty relaxed, maybe this is one of the snakes I photographed a few weeks ago.

Wait a minute… This is the Allegan Forest, not the Amazon Forest – I don’t expect to see snakes hanging from the branches here. After a few moments, the snake glides away – sliding into the bushes on which it was perched, weaving itself into the shadows below.

A few moments later, I have the next encounter with a snake. This time I’m lying on my stomach, trying to get a shot of a dragonfly perched on a stalk, just inches above the ground. As is usually the case, I get no photo. But as I turn to leave I suddenly realize that I’m eye to eye with a blue racer. The snake is much smaller than the ones I saw a few weeks ago – this one is only about 3 feet long. I can’t even photograph it – it’s too close. I rise up and step aside, and the snake darts off towards the water’s edge, and the thick bushes there.

Well, this morning is off to a good start…

Of course, I’m more concerned with finding dragonflies, so I scour the fields off 48th street to see what is new. As in the past few weeks, dot tailed whitefaces remain in charge. They are actually incredibly numerous – I try to estimate how many appear in a square yard of the field, and it seems like there are at least 3 and sometimes as many as 6. Here are a couple of shots of the dot tails:

Aside from the dot tails, twelve spotted skimmers have also appeared. Though they are never as abundant, these dragonflies are much larger and more elegant in their flight. Here’s a snap:

Leaving the pond and fields along 48th street, I head to the coreopsis field a mile or so away. In the past week the coreopsis has really come into bloom, but I only spot a couple of butterflies on the flowers. I spent a bit of time pursuing this eastern tiger swallowtail, only to find that it had a nasty bite out of the top layer of one wing – close call with a bird, most likely:

So I wound up wandering through the open field. The coreopsis looks great, and will only get to be fuller in the next few weeks. After wandering and watching for a while, I found a handful of Rapids Clubtails, which I first spotted last week in the fields north of the river. While the individuals I spotted last week were vibrant yellow, the ones I saw this week were much more greenish yellow. They still liked to pose on the sandy soil – here’s a shot:

From there I moved on to the fields to the north of the river. I saw a delta spiketail, but was not able to get a photo. The Rapids Clubtails were still prominent, and I managed this shot of a mating pair – hmmm, maybe the difference in color has to do with gender.

All in the all, the spring dragonfly season is off to a good start. I’m surprised to not see any Blue Dashers. But they should be along in due time.

A parting shot of the garter snake, high up in the brush:

In the days ahead, I won’t be spending as much time as usual in the Allegan Forest. So last week I visited all of my favorite locations, and lingered extra long in the few places I feel closest to. I hit the Ottawa Marsh, the Coreopsis Field, the Swan Creek Dam, the bluff at the end on 125th Ave, the many empty fields on either side of 44th Street…

My favorite place of all in the Old Farmstead, off 48th street. You won’t find that name on any map – I made it up. But as a son of Adam I reserve the right to name things as I see fit.

On my last visit there, a chipmunk who lives near the entry point paused in its home – a hollow log. In the winter the snow in this place is a riot of fox and coyote tracks. They surely prowl the area, looking for prey like this little rodent. But somehow it manages to survive, and on this visit it poked its head out of its hole and watched me as I struggled to photograph dragonflies. Even as I turned my attention to it, the chipmonk remained unflinching – curious as to what I was doing, and more than willing to allow me to get close enough to make its portrait with a mere 200mm lens.

There is nothing about this place that suggests a farm – at least to the casual viewer. There is a crumbling corner of a small building’s foundation – you have to look for it to find it. There is a pile of field stones, rising out of the sandy soil. And that’s about it.

But the plants tell the story. In the spring the daffodils bloom. Apple trees rub elbows with dogwoods and redbuds in the forest. Near the pile of field stones one beleaguered apple tree still produces tempting fruit, and in late summer proffers a handful of bright red apples.

There are other signs. Lily of the Valley covers the forest floor. Palms – of all things, Palms – send their spiky leaves up through the sandy soil, right next to huge patches of Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus. Around this time of year, Irises push up from the soil – not one or two, but dozens. Only a few bloom, but their sword shaped leaves stab up at the sky, as if to say “I am still here.”

And then there are the strawberries. Acres and acres of wild – or is it feral – strawberries. Their thorny, wiry, stems make my style of “crawl on your belly” photography difficult – I often return with elbows and knees bright red from crawling on these inhospitable plants. In the spring they produce a few small, pale flowers. In mid summer they produce a few small berries. But year round they cover the ground with their spiny branches.

The soil here is very sandy. In places its breaks open with pure, white sand – the kind you’d expect to see at a beach. There are two – count them, two – asparagus plants in the sandy fields. They blend into the surviving vegetation every spring, and by midsummer wave their feathery plums in the breeze. The final remnants of a crop that some farmer may have pinned his hopes on, years ago.

The sandy hill slopes down to what I used to call a seasonal marsh, and now call a pond. There are some large white pines here, lots of wild raspberries, and other trees and shrubs. Many of the plants that lined the edge of the marsh are now dying – drowning under the now high water levels.

In the summer when I visit this place I frequently encounter deer. Sometimes it’s a fawn hiding in the tall grass under the walnut trees. Other times the deer have charged across the marsh as I’ve come close, kicking up spray as they run through the shallow water.

The marsh has been home to dragonflies, frogs, snakes, and turtles. I’m not sure how things will change now that it is an open body of water. These days, geese and ducks land in it, and frogs line the shore. I hear a lot more frogs than ever at this place – the twang of bullfrogs in particular.

On this last visit I wandered past the crumbling foundation stone, past the pile of rocks, down the hills along the pine forest to the pond. I followed the edge of the pond a ways, and then made my way back. I ran into two huge Blue Racer snakes in the dried grass – both verging on 6 feet in length – and we went our ways. I spent of a bit of time sitting on the pile of rock, and then made my way back to the car, passing through knee high Goat’s Beard as I left this place, leaving it to go its way in the summer months.

A few days ago I wandered into the Allegan Forest. I was greeted with washed out roads, flooded ponds, and swollen creeks and drains. But walking through the sandy pine barrens I was also greeted by … garter snakes.

These harmless little snakes don’t grow over a few feet long. They are quick and agile, eating mostly crickets, grasshoppers, and other insects. I ran into the first one along the edge of a pine forest. I had to press the camera into the sandy soil to get a low angle shot of the serpent, but the subject was very cooperative and just watched me as I crawled on my stomach on the ground next to it. (I guess we had something in common.)

Later in the day, as I wandered out of the pine forest that borders the pond that used to be a marsh, a much larger garter snake slipped through the field, making its way through the dried grass. It was much more energetic than the first snake – perhaps because it was basking in full sun. It mugged for the camera briefly, and then glided away to the pond’s edge.