The Tadpole Project: Tree Frog Eggs

 

 After a rainy night in the first week of July, I was delighted to find a moire of amphibian eggs spread across the surface of our little 200-gallon fishpond in the back yard. This was a first for me. I'd seen American toad eggs in their long spiral jellystrings.  Though I wasn't sure I'd seen their eggs, I knew that green frogs had bred in the pond.  Three adorable little green frog babes in the pond this year attest to that. But these eggs were different, making a carpet of fresh black zygotes across the leaves of my floating heart plant.

 

Of course, I had my suspicions as to who'd laid them. What amphibian breeds in July after a heavy rain?

Why, the gray tree frog does that. Maybe you've heard its birdlike call, a rolling, hollow and very loud trill, BRRRRRRP! coming from up in the trees in the evening woods in midsummer. It's a true tree frog, with big sticky Velcrolike pads on its toes, impressive jumping skilz, and even madder clinging skilz. It's a Spiderman among frogs.

The gray tree frog is one of those creatures that I feel lucky to know, lucky to have in my backyard fauna. It's a big, hearty creature, cool and sticky, tame and winsome; in color downright licheny. This little fellow was trapped in a fold of plastic on a little country greenhouse (Pleasant Valley Greenhouse) where I love to stop and buy nice plants. He didn't think he was trapped; there was a nice puddle of rainwater in there, but I was afraid he'd cook when the sun came out so the proprietor and I climbed up on a table and got him down.

 And put him on a licheny branch where he'd blend in and be happier.  Well, he felt so comfortable he pinched a big gray tree frog loaf, right there in front of me and everybody. Enh! Enh!

After Chet was wrongly implicated a few times for dropping stray bits on the sidewalk, I've taught my family to recognize toad turds as well as copperhead and rat snake turds. This, my friends, is a gray tree frog turd. Much larger than you'd imagine he could make, about 3/4" long!  Why,  I stepped over an American toad turd on the sidewalk this morning. Solid black, no dab of white like a rat snake's has.  And big. Look for them. Or don't. Whatever floats your boat.

 

Thus ends my dissertation on toad turds. All good things must end. Ooh, creeper in the treefrog photo!

So imagine my excitement when I found those eggs in the pond. Let's make more tree frogs, shall we? The Tadpole Project continues...

The Midwest Birding Symposium, Baker Style

A bit of a hurried post as I prepare for our biggest day (Saturday) at the MBS here in Lakeside, Ohio. It's everything we dreamt of and so much more. About 1,000 people, all committed to birdwatching and appreciating and conserving our environment, are gathered together, and it is a beautiful explosion. 

I am very happy to have Chet Baker along, and there are lots of folks who are happy about that, too.

He's taking his job as meeter/greeter at Hoover Auditorium very seriously.

Surely there is someone here who needs a kiss. I am on the lookout for people who need kisses.

 Found one! Here's KatDoc, and she always likes my kisses. She does one better--she gets down and plays with me. She is a 10 on the Dog-o-Meter.

 There are wonderful talks going on in Hoover all day long, and Chet and I are delighted to be there with our art display, able to listen and learn while manning our booth.

 Mary Ann Barnett is a very nice bloggerlady. Those people who have blogs seem to be the happiest to see me.

I gave my friend Ruthie the Nature Knitter some special love. She needed dog.

 

She is a very, very nice person. I like her very much.

 Mether has about 50 paintings hanging up. They are all her favorites from Letters from Eden and from her book that is coming out, The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds. There are a lot of people wanting to buy them but Mether says she wants to mount a traveling exhibit so she doesn't want to sell them before the book comes out. It is awkward, in my opinion. So people have to settle for ordering the new book or buying the new bird gardening book, or a print, or Letters from Eden. I think she should sell them all so she can keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed.

 I do have to admit she makes sure I am comfortable. She has a chair set up with a brand new non-smelly bed, some bikkits,  and my leash. My friend Miss Jen Sauter made me a special  MBS kerchief, which lends a tinge of officiality to my presence.

 

We are in a huge auditorium where people like Kim and Kenn Kaufman, Pete Dunne, David Bird, Bridget Stuchbury, Alvaro Jaramillo and Mether and Daddeh are talking. 

 There are many, many birders here. This is Jen Brumfield, getting her lunch. She refused any help with her scope, claiming that it was perfectly balanced. I have to believe her.

 This is the wonderful blogger Chris Ciccone. I was happy to meet him!

There was a small small babeh here and I was so excited to see him I jumped up and kissed him while he was still in his daddeh's arms. Then we talked a little bit. We used pictures instead of words. That babeh liked me.

I try to make sure that babehs understand that dogs are friendly and sweet. I also like the way babehs smell. 
They like me, too.

 

Mether pretty much gives me the run of Hoover, but she makes me come back to her booth often. She should not worry. I have work to do, and that sometimes involves going out and clearing the big stupid fox squirtles from the premises. It needs to be done. They have been running amok for too long.

 This is Mether's editor, Lisa White at Houghton Mifflin. She loves me so much she bought my half-sister Ella Fitzgerald. Part of my job is to give people who need it some dog, just when they need it. I must go now, because I am needed! More later!
Love,

Chet Baker, Greeter Dog

Helping a Great Blue Heron

 If you're going to make so much as a stab at wildlife rehabilitation, you have to be ready and willing to have your plans changed with the ring of a telephone.
In order to get my state rehabilitator's permit, I must supply my home phone number, which is then published in a booklet that goes to every wildlife officer, soil conservation service, park, and veterinarian in the state.
This is not as I would like it to be, but it is what it is.
In the summer I get a lot of calls. Most people I can help over the phone. But sometimes I have to do a run.

A great blue heron standing hurt on the porch of an abandoned house is cause for a run.

In this day of cell phones and zapping photos, you can find out a lot before you ever climb in the car. The people who found this heron walking through their front yard sent me this photo:

 

and although the bird looks OK, I could see it was in terrible trouble with its left foot. A heron needs its feet, and this one looked to have a middle toe, at least, that was badly broken and maybe infected.

There was a lot of stuff everywhere and the heron had been climbing around their yard, looking for who knows what. Help, probably. Baby birds do weird things; injured birds go weird places. Who knows what they're thinking. Maybe they're thinking someone can help them. It's not too farfetched to guess that.

 These folks have banks of cages with stray cats they've taken in in their yard; the cats are being fed and medicated, and maybe the heron saw that and put two and two together.

 I don't know. Maybe. It made its way there from the river across the highway.

So I hurried to get there, and found the heron staring at minnows in a baby pool that the people had thoughtfully provided it.

 It was a baby heron, probably not long at all out of the nest. I could tell that by its pale feather edgings and the barred look of its neck feathers; by the lack of any breeding plumage at all. You can see all this best in the first photo. I guessed that perhaps it had broken its toe getting tangled in monofilament in the nest, a common and very sad occurrence. Fishermen who leave those big tangles of mono hanging in trees are so careless, so thoughtless, just getting good birds in bad trouble. It's a terrible thing to do, because herons and ospreys, among others, think monofilament looks like lovely nesting material. They incorporate it in their nests and once tangled in it a baby bird is in deep trouble.
 It cuts like a knife, embeds itself in flesh, breaks bones, and will not give way when the bird struggles.

 

 I donned some goggles and gloves and easily captured the bird, grabbing the neck and bill first. Herons will put your eye out in a single lightning strike, but this one was much too weak to be lightningy.

 

I had brought some Ensure in a syringe, and I fed the poor emaciated thing. Sure enough, its foot was terribly infected, the middle and outer toe with compound fractures, giving it a very poor prognosis for survival. Foot infections in birds can be intractable. And herons need to perch, need to walk to forage. They can't do with only one or two functional toes on a foot.

 

Looking inside its bill, I was alarmed to find reddish, oblong parasites which Kristi at the Ohio Wildlife Center advised over the phone are flukes. She said most herons have them and they don't seem to cause problems. But oh, yuck. Flukes in the gape. Poor weakened thing, it didn't need to have flukes, too.

There was nothing to do but drive this bird to the Ohio Wildlife Center in Columbus, 2 1/2 hours away, to see if there was any hope at all for its foot and its future.

I drove, enjoying the beautiful July Ohio countryside, snorting the stench of sick heron poo out of my nose, musing on futility and stupid old hope, knowing this bird was probably too far gone, too badly injured to be salvaged, but at the same time unable to leave it there on the porch, staring into a baby pool.

 

 It died that very night, probably before I even got home, but someone--the two who found it; me; the staff and veterinarian at OWC-- at least cared, someone tried.

 Another day, another try.