Frogging

We’ve been birding continuously (67 and counting) and enjoying all sorts of lovely green spots as we do it. One place we have yet to visit is a patch of damp grassland a few minutes from my parent’s house where flufftails and longclaws abound. Well. I say ‘yet to visit’. I mean ‘yet to visit *in daylight*’. Let me explain.

Sunday evening began with a braii. Sweetcorn, stuffed peppers and the smell of smoke as we chatted and caught up. Lovely, and normally not a situation one is eager to leave. But this time, I kept catching the eyes of Ellie and Scott. Time to leave? Shall we head out? You see, we had other evening plans as well, and we didn’t want to be out tooooo late. By 19:10 we could take it no longer, and muttering farewells we slipped away from the social and drove off into the dark.

Our mission was frogs. Monovale vlei, the aforementioned patch of grassland, was rumoured to contain something interesting and amphibian. Navigating the crumbling back-roads and trying to find our way, we quizzed Scott for everything he knew about this hobby that was so foreign to us.

It turns out, frogging mainly involved tromping around in the wet, looking for tiny creatures who make a lot of noise until you get close. We set off into the vlei, lights piercing the dark and reflecting off thousands of shimmering droplets on the reeds, left there by the recent rains. Every flick of movement was met with deep scrutiny as grasshoppers, moths and mosquitoes got out of our way as we pushed further from the road.

The ground was sodden, often completely underwater. Our breath fogged in the torchlight, and we were filled with excitement by the chorus of frog calls around us. It didn’t take long for Scott to find the first frog of the evening – a green reed frog whose identity was uncertain.

Many more sightings of our green friends soon followed as Ellie and I got our eye in. Around us, we could hear Bubbling Cassinas and another unknown frog calling, but try as we might we could never locate anything but those green reed frogs. Up and down we searched, scrutinising each clump of reads as we crept about. Eventually the sky dropped a few raindrops as a warning and we began to move back towards the car, still hoping for another species or two. No luck.

I started the engine, flicked on the lights and turned the car towards home. 5 seconds later, a toad hopped across our path and we leapt out of the car in pursuit. The toad got away, but on the patch of road where it had been was the cutest little frog you’ve ever seen – a Puddle Frog 🙂

We arrived home, but before we could retire to our separate cottages I persuaded Scott to come with us to inspect the garden ponds. There we found River Frogs and Guttural Toads, while Scott grumbled about ‘Canned frogging’ and ‘Cheating’. Call it what you like – we found as many species in those 3 minutes as we had the rest of the night! We had had a ton of fun, collected some good reference photos of the reed frog (believed to be Hyperolius nasutus) and added another adventure to our rapidly growing 2019 list.

PS. 105 – “Their land swarmed with frogs Even in the chambers of their kings.”