Frog in the hole

This is a photo that I always find rather cute. It shows three Peron's Treefrogs (Litoria peronii) peeking out of their daytime shelter prior to moving out and commencing the night's foraging.

I've always had this species in my garden though recently they seem to be having great success. The main 'source' population for the area has historically been a golf-course pond about a kilometre away, from which the frogs disperse into the suburbs (in some cases I've found tiny little frogs still with tail stubs appearing in my garden in late summer after making the mammoth journey).

The last two seasons, however, the frogs have bred in my garden, in bathtubs and other containers of water lying around. So there are more cute little baby frogs around than usual.

The shelter is a big hit with them; it's actually a hanging pot that has a separate reservoir on the bottom for holding water and keeping the soil moist. The frogs come and go through that little hole and spend their days nestled up in the crevice at the top.

Personally I find it pretty unlikely that all the frogs that found this spot did so independently (and in a count a couple of days ago there were something like four adults and three juveniles like the one at the top of the photo). So I'll be doing a bit of an investigation in my garden and elsewhere to try to determine whether these frogs are using some sort of scent-cue to locate shelters used by other frogs. I'm also interested in whether these frogs will choose to aggregate given the opportunity to spread themselves out in plenty of shelters.

So stay tuned, these frogs are going to become active in another couple of weeks and they're likely to do other interesting things like call, pair up and breed.