Is it normal to find frogs in your backyard?

[Hawkeye]

So I decided to get to the back and mow the yard down shorter as we do get rabbits in the back and I was thinking maybe a tick on a rabbit hops onto grass and then on to my kid.

Anyways - I'm mowing and I see something hop out of the way - tiny like a cricket you might get at the LFS. On closer inspection though it is a frog! I grab it and figure cool little guy - it would have bit the dust if I kept mowing, or if I had some landscape company do the yard for me.

So I place him in a cup except this frog climbs walls - it scaled the cup with no problem and hopped away. I was able to recapture it. I promise to release it - just wanted to show the kids what i found.

Anyways - it's just weird to find a frog in the backyard. My neighbor a couple houses down has a koi pond but i doubt it came from there. I'm thinking the "public" accessway a little farther behind the house is the root cause. We've seen deer, groundhog, rabbits and turkeys come out from there - so why not a frog?

Curious how tiny frogs like this survive nj winters.

 

[GregW]

(Everybody)
Green acres is the place to be
Farm living is the life for me
Land spreading out,
so far and wide
Keep Manhattan,
just give me that countryside.

(Hawkeye's part)
New York
is where I'd rather stay
I get allergic smelling hay
I just adore a penthouse view
Darling, I love you,
but give me Park Avenue.

 

[ReeferNets]

My grandparents used to the get them i believe they burrow during the winter.

 

[Tazmaniancowboy]

Phil, I am sorry I was laughing at your post and then I read Gregs.....Now my eyse are tearing I am laughing so hard! Welcome to NJ dude! LOL You can keep that city life

 

[hurtback]

last weekend i pulled a dead frog out of my pool---this sunday another one---i dont have a clue as to where there coming from. I do have a field behind my house, but there's no ponds anywhere.
These frogs are the green ones--usually you find them in ponds---
once they got into my pool, i guess with the chlorine in the pool, they didnt make it
strange it is.......... ???

steve

 

[Hawkeye]

(Everybody)
Green acres is the place to be
Farm living is the life for me
Land spreading out,
so far and wide
Keep Manhattan,
just give me that countryside.

(Hawkeye's part)
New York
is where I'd rather stay
I get allergic smelling hay
I just adore a penthouse view
Darling, I love you,
but give me Park Avenue.

Hawkeye: I've got a great idea.
everybody: What's that?
Hawkeye: let's move back. ;D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MohJmg9ku0A
5:05 and 5:17...hilarious.

 

[Tazmaniancowboy]

Your post brought back memories to me.....When I was living in Old Bridge with my wife (girlfriend at the time)we were walking to the car from our apartment and she saw a frog. She stopped dead in her tracks and said "oh my god, a frog!" Seeing them all the time as I was growing up, I was thinking "oh my god she's a freak, what is the big deal?" When I asked her, she said that she had never seen a frog in the wild! I laughed my butt off...in the wild? LOL OK, I guess they didn't have frogs in Edison! Then I proceeded to name animals like squirrels, rabbits, birds to bust her chops. When I told her about your post she chuckled and asked me if I was going to embarrass her, She'll never live it down!

Someday I'll have to tell you the story of the chicken I found in the back yard of my old house, and I wasn't living in the woods at that time!

 

[Nickjr000]

Terrestrial frogs normally hibernate on land. American toads (Bufo americanus) and other frogs that are good diggers burrow deep into the soil, safely below the frost line. Some frogs, such as the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) and the spring peeper (Hyla crucifer), are not adept at digging and instead seek out deep cracks and crevices in logs or rocks, or just dig down as far as they can in the leaf litter. These hibernacula are not as well protected from frigid weather and may freeze, along with their inhabitants.


And yet the frogs do not die. Why? Antifreeze! True enough, ice crystals form in such places as the body cavity and bladder and under the skin, but a high concentration of glucose in the frog's vital organs prevents freezing. A partially frozen frog will stop breathing, and its heart will stop beating. It will appear quite dead. But when the hibernaculum warms up above freezing, the frog's frozen portions will thaw, and its heart and lungs resume activity--there really is such a thing as the living dead!

-GOOGLE

 

[MadReefer]

Phil,
You should have taken a pic. If it was small and a climber I would assume its a Spring Peeper. There are 3 species tree frog in NJ but 1 is on the endangered list. Don't feel bad about the mowing. One day I was mowing and felt a big bump when I lucked it was a box turtle. Luckily all irs appendages were tucked in so all I did was run it over with the whhel. No harm done but kept a few days to be sure then released it.

Mark

 

[Hawkeye]

I was a little leary of handling it as it was so tiny and I didn't want to crush it trying to take a pic - so i took one while it was in a glass jar. It looks exactly like a spring peeper. I didn't know they were a protected species in NJ. Nickel on the right side for scale.

 

[jimroth]

Phil,
You should have taken a pic. If it was small and a climber I would assume its a Spring Peeper. There are 3 species tree frog in NJ but 1 is on the endangered list. Don't feel bad about the mowing. One day I was mowing and felt a big bump when I lucked it was a box turtle. Luckily all irs appendages were tucked in so all I did was run it over with the whhel. No harm done but kept a few days to be sure then released it.

Mark

That could be a peeper or a little gray treefrog. Peepers have an "X" on their backs, hence their scientific name (hyla crucifer). We are fairly lousy with spring peepers, most wet areas around here are. I doubt they are protected but the pine barrens treefrog is not only beautiful but really endangered. They are hard to find even if you know where to look. A gal I met who works for Nature Conservancy was tracking them with little pieces of radioactive wire. Not sure if the frogs got to vote about that. The other frog would be the gray treefrog Hyla Versicolor. We used to get a lot of them but only see them occasionally now. Nice critter, good to keep as a pet for a while.

When we see little "frogs" they are usually tiny toads (bufo americanus) which have a population explosion every spring. They work they way up our little hill from the wet areas where they breed, and hit us all at once in a wave. This must have been a good year for them because we are seeing a lot of garter snakes, whose main foodsource around me is little toads.

 

[MadReefer]

Nice shot Phil. next time I will have to come and get it from you. So my son can study it for a while and then release it.

 

[Hawkeye]

sounds good. I was thinking you'd be resourceful enough to keep it. Course now when I mow the lawn or break out the weed whacker I'm going to go a little "slower"....

 

[Hawkeye]

That could be a peeper or a little gray treefrog. Peepers have an "X" on their backs, hence their scientific name (hyla crucifer). We are fairly lousy with spring peepers, most wet areas around here are. I doubt they are protected but the pine barrens treefrog is not only beautiful but really endangered. They are hard to find even if you know where to look. A gal I met who works for Nature Conservancy was tracking them with little pieces of radioactive wire. Not sure if the frogs got to vote about that. The other frog would be the gray treefrog Hyla Versicolor. We used to get a lot of them but only see them occasionally now. Nice critter, good to keep as a pet for a while.

When we see little "frogs" they are usually tiny toads (bufo americanus) which have a population explosion every spring. They work they way up our little hill from the wet areas where they breed, and hit us all at once in a wave. This must have been a good year for them because we are seeing a lot of garter snakes, whose main foodsource around me is little toads.

My wife saw a gartner snake outside our front door earlier this spring. Never knew we even had snakes around here but it makes sense. I guess in order to see bears we'd have to move to your neck of the woods!

 

[JRWOHLER]

Better a frogs then the copperheads that used to visit our house when I was growing up.
Nasty buggers, don't like lawnmowers at all.

 

[ReeferNets]

when i was younger like 16 or 17 doing landscaping with one of my buddies, we were doing some weed whacking along a fence and i heard him scream like a girl.

I ran over and there was gardner snakes bits all over him!!!

He didnt even see it.