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The pink fingernail bromeliad on my porch needed dividing back in late May, so one weekend I pulled it out of its pot and was breaking several divisions off when I found a cluster of 5 eggs of something near the surface of the soil. Now we have anole lizards and salamanders that are almost transparent and toads and at night when its not too cool I hear tree frogs, so I wasn't sure what they could be. |
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I carefully moved them to the cuplike center of the plant and covered them with some moist sphagnum. They seemed to need to stay fairly wet whatever they were, so I figured that would do it. |
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Then I got out the camera and tripod and macro lens for close - ups and teleconverter and close - up filter, uncovering them long enough to get my pictures and covering them back up. |
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I repeated this every few days - uncovering and quickly setting up and taking my pictures. I used sunlight and an off-camera flash so I could get a lot of light and get as much of them in focus as possible. |
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They started out as little white yolk sacs with black eyes, but after a few days I could see a spine developing and a body started to take shape. Soon little legs and feet appeared, and the yolk sac shrank. |
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They moved quite a bit, whatever they were, wriggling inside their soft little eggs. Each one was about as big as this O, maybe a tiny bit bigger. The neatest thing was getting focused really close and suddenly noticing something dark pink moving rhythmically near the center of each body, and realizing that it was its tiny heart beating. |
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Finally after a couple of weeks of checking them regularly, I went out and lifted the sphagnum and the eggs were gone! I poked around very carefully and uncovered five little newly-hatched frogs. I went back for my camera one last time. This was a lot tougher because now they could move away from me and hide in the moss. I have never seen a frog so little - really no bigger than the eggs they hatched from, but fully formed and starting to hop about. One day soon I will get a field guide and find out more about the little things.
Meanwhile I enjoy listening to their singing while I'm outside bothering the plants. I just hope they eat mosquitos! |
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