My New Resident

[rarambo]

Hello all, I am new here. I am very pleased to find a site that has resources on frogs and toads.

What found me here is the fact that as I was cleaning my deck the other day my 5 year old daughter discovered that I have a new resident toad or frog on my deck. I have no idea how he/she managed to get up there, but I had two planters that I usually leave turned over and when I was painting I had left one upright and left the other one inverted over it (in hopes that it would keep the upright one from filling with water). Well to make a long story short the inverted planter was a bit off center and the planter under it had gotten filled almost to the brim with water. The planter over it kept it from filling up with dead leaves from the trees behind our house.

Inspecting the water-filled planter there appears to be a considerable amount of dirt sediment at the bottom but the water appears mostly clear save for some insect larvae (probably what the frog is eating in there). The planter has a sloped edge that the frog is able to climb up on to rest and get air but he swims all around in there and appears to hang out in the bottom quite a bit.

I'm not sure what kind of frog he is. I was looking online at Maryland frogs.
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/streams/pdfs/MDFrogs.pdf

My daughter and I agreed that he doesn't resemble any of those pictures. We don't think he's a toad because his skin is smooth. He's brown rather than green with irregular patches and camoflages nicely in mud so he might be a green frog though I think his markings are much darker than the ones I see in the pictures of those. My daughter held him in her hands and told me that his underside is white. We live very close to the Little Patuxent river (it runs behind our house). I will try to get a picture of him tomorrow to share if anyone wants to try to identify him. He's very small though, probably not quite 2 inches in length from butt to head and we do tend to get toads around here.

I guess the reason I'm writing is that I don't plan to set up a terrarium for him but I would like to make him comfy in case he wants to stick around. My daughter was thrilled to see we had a frog. But I am worried because the winter months are almost upon us and that planter will ice over when it gets very cold. Is he likely to be all right with his current set-up or should I consider catching him and releasing him in the trees behind the house (I can't get down to the river without getting stuck down there, I've seen rescue people called in to pull people out of the ditch before).

Also, any ideas on how he managed to get on my deck? i don't think he's a tree frog, he doesn't appear to have round sticky toes and my deck is very high.

[rarambo]

Hmm, I managed to get his picture his morning and noted that he has almost a dark banding around his legs (will try to get the picture up soon but I'm not used to using my uncle's camera and I need to find the cable for downloading pictures to my computer.) He might actually be an Upland Chorus Frog. He's definitely small enough. I think he's no more than an inch long after looking at him (or her) again today.

The frog also does not appear to be very active during the daytime hours. I haven't really looked in on it at night. It might just be because it's getting cooler outside.

[rarambo]

Here we go!


In this image he appears to have quite a bit of yellow on him but out of the water he looks very brown. It was hard to get a good sharp image because he was under the water.

[wallymobobber]

I actual have the same kind of frog in my terrarium although I have never even looked him up, I am going to, if I find anything I will let you know. If anyone else knows that would help me as well as rarambo, I also have a darker one same style.