2016-6-26 - busy afternoon at the lake

I managed to package the activity into one picture. It was fun!

The green inset on the lower left has an arrow in it. Just in front of that arrow is the lake where I've been stalking frogs. The best I ever could do prior to today was hear a "plunk" and then see ripples on the water in different spots in the ditch here and there. I thought perhaps I was walking too "hard" and decided to make sure I was using a softer step and an approach a bit slower the next time I went out. It paid off and I was glad I brought my camera with me.

As I approached, I did see movement, heard the "plunk", and saw ripples in that particular puddle of water that the arrow in the lower left inset is pointing to, but no frog. What I saw move I took to be a cricket frog because it was so small, maybe about an inch. Thinking there might be more around I continued a more careful approach and, seeing a couple of bumps in the water, took a chance on the camera's ability, used the zoom of course, and was able to capture a photo with three frogs in it. Can you find the third frog? I was surprised that they weren't cricket frogs but sub-adult green frogs. It seems, that even at that young age they're fully marked.

While taking pictures I also saw movement on the mud bank behind the puddle. I took a few pictures thinking that maybe I was watching a big ant scurrying about, but like with the frogs earlier, until I looked at the photos on the computer, I didn't know I was seeing two black and yellow mud-dauber wasps. That's them in the background picture. The inset on the top left shows one of the daubers making what might be a mud ball to take back to the nest-to-be.

The last thing I noticed while sorting the pictures on the pc was the critter in the inset on the upper right. I wasn't even sure it was an insect because all there was to see was maybe four legs but searching on insect with four legs and a snout brought up a hit on the first page that led me to marsh treaders. Didn't know there was such a thing as a marsh treader but since it looked similar to my bug I did a search for marsh treaders water striders and then was able to narrow the bug down to a water strider in the family Gerridae. It does have six legs but the first two legs are very short and it's likely it was holding them in such a position so that it looked like they were making a snout. While reading about them I learned they sometimes sit on the dirt a few centimeters from the edge of the water!

You might have noticed in the green inset in the lower left corner that the arrow is pointing to a circle. That's where the water strider was. It's amazing to me that the camera was able to pick that up from so far away.

That was the busy afternoon at the lake today. Fun!