Bird Aerobatics

 We hung a bird seed bell outside the back door and set the camera to see who came to lunch.  We caught some interesting pictures of bird aerobatics.  The first shows the wings moving out of sync.  It seems to me that most times the flying motion is described with both wings moving up and down at the same time.  In the second picture, the bird is hovering just before landing on his soon to be lunch.

Toads in a Frog Ball

 The Frog Ball is an interesting phenomenon that we see almost every spring.  Here we have more than one male toad trying to mate with a single female.  This frog ball is at least two males with a female but it's hard to get an exact count as the mass flails around.  In this case another male toad is nearby maybe planning to join the group.  Our dog was very curious about what the heck was happening - but being very busy, the toads were ignoring the dog even though his nose was just inches away.

Wild Toad Night

 After 4 days in the 60s, the toads woke up to start making tadpoles.  A bunch of them came to the pond from the surrounding woods and jumped in the water for an early spring swim.  They were making noise all night long.  In the first picture is a single toad maybe still looking for a mate and behind him a young couple that hooked up.  You can see the orange of one of the goldfish sleeping on the bottom of the pond. The other picture is a young couple hanging on to the edge of one of the rocks.  Interestingly, last year Wild Toad Night happened on March 12th - the same date as this year.