A walk in the park

[numpty]

This past weekend I had a nocturnal ramble over the hills of Taipei's nearest national park, YangMingShan. It's relatively small, but packed full of interesting geographical features such as volcanic fumeroles, sub-tropical forest, grasslands, etc.

My goal was to have a good look at the Taipei green tree frog, Rhacophorus taipeianus, a species I'd seen before, but not photographed well. It generally breeds through the winter, and had already started in the higher areas of the park. Males dig little holes under the grass on the banks of ponds and sit there calling. I didn't want to disturb these guys, so just waited for various individuals to pop up on their way about the pond.






Out in even greater numbers than the tree frog was the Central Formosan Toad, Bufo bankorensis.





There were a few of the other usual suspects about, Hylarana latouchii ...


... and Babina adenopleura, which I was obviously too lazy to get a decent photo of.


No snakes, but here's a sleeping Japalura swinhonis.


I spotted various other critters throughout the night ... masked palm civet, bats, etc, but didn't manage to get too many decent pictures. I could have tried photographing the numerous stray dogs that kept creeping up on me, but I was too busy trying not to get bitten.

Thanks for looking!

[GrifTheGreat]

Nice shots!! Looks like that female Toad is in a lot of trouble.

[Namio]

Nice shots!! Looks like that female Toad is in a lot of trouble.

A toad ball!

[Namio]

Beautiful shots of the frogs! I like how robust the toe pads are in R. taipeianus!

[flybyferns]

Thank You, SO much for sharing these beautiful photos.
I'm sure everyone will enjoy them!

"Fieldwork" is one of my favorite sections of Frog Forum.
Lynn

[deranged chipmunk]

thanks for sharing these photos. i love, love, LOVE the pic of ​Bufo bankorensis covered in duckweed ......and the 2 shots together? priceless

[numpty]

Hey, thanks for the nice words, and sorry for the delay in replying. Got a new laptop, and McAfee seems to think that I shouldn't visit this site ... something about its "risky behavior", apparently. Hmmm ... what a bunch of degenerates we must be!