This is my second (or maybe third) last Bleating Tree Frog tadpole waiting for dusk and for its tail to drop so it can leave the pond for the first time.



An adult male Bleating Tree Frog checked out my lily pond, my fish pond and my emergency/quarantine pond last Oct/Nov and decided that the one with filter and the little fountain and the oxygenating plants which had easy access to the garden beds and ,most importantly, had no fish in it (at the time) was the perfect place to invite his lady friend to, which he did very loudly for several weeks ;)

Cool frog, guess you would know by my name that frogs are number 1 on my list. I saw where they have discovered ( read the story on Yahoo last night ) a frog species that has no lungs. It absorbes all it's oxygen through it's skin.
Can you post some pictures of the adults sometime? I don't have any other ponds or streams close to my house so the only frogs I can raise are bullfrogs unless I can find a vendor that sell some other species of tad poles. Bullfrogs though will eat most other smaller frogs that hange around too long so I'm not sure it would be worth the effort. Love to hear the frogs call each other a night. More pics please. :)

FM3

Oh Neat Picture! It brings back memories from my childhood when I was tadpole /frog obssessed!

That's a cute little tadpole/frog! I'm not familiar with Australian amphibians. How many kinds of amphibians do you have where you live?

As far as I know, frogs absorb (suck in) their tail; it doesn't fall off.

I hardly ever see the adults except in late spring/early summer when the males are calling. You can't miss them then because they are incredibly noisy.

They are interesting though. I though we had a couple of different frogs by the ponds but it turns out the frog just changes colour form a pale grey green in the day to a dark mottley olive green at night.

They seem to sleep all day and are active at night. I have only seen one in the daytime because the father of the frog in the pic started his calling from the roof gutter above where the ponds are. He then started sleeping in an inset area of the sliding door frame under a clump of old cobwebs and leaves so once we knew he was there we could see him quite easily. Just as well for him that door does slide completely open. Occasionally there would be a second smaller frog there as well under another leafy clump - I thought it was probably a female.

Yes, that is a frog. I have now exhausted my extensive knowledge of these creatures! :D

Derrick

Apparently there are lots of different types of tree frog around here. I have only seen 3 different types. The ones that laid the eggs in the pond and 2 other types that we find inside the house sometimes after really heavy rain. We can hear 3 distinctive calls in the garden in Spring/Summer after a good rain.

We also have plenty of frog eating snakes and lizards in the yard too in Summer.

You are absolutely right - frogs do absorb their tails. I don't know where my brain was when I wrote that. You an see that already that tail looks nothing like a functioning tadpole tail. He was just getting some gentle autumn afternoon sun and waiting until it started to get dark to move. He even seemed to know which side of the pond has the easiest access to the garden too because he picked the right side.

We have a couple of garden arches over the pond are on the verandah with netting over them and we let the passion flower vines grow over them in summer because the sun can be very strong in summer and the water can get too warm if it gets too much sun. It keeps the fish and the frogs safe from kookaburras and kingfishers too.