Last night was one of those weird nights when the wind was swooshing the trees around, and it couldn’t make up its mind whether it was cool or warm, so tried both alternately. The land itself seemed restless and it was not conducive to sleeping, so when Andrew found this frog I had a midnight look at it. It is the great barred frog (Mixophyes fasciolatus), common in our area.
The great barred frog; photo by Andrew Roberts
I’d often heard them ‘wark’-ing away on wet summer nights, their call deep and resonating. But I imagined from the sound that they would be a lot bigger than this one – 7 cm from nose to rear end. This is within the normal range of 6 to 8 cm for adults.
It’s called ‘barred’ because of the markings on the legs.
You can here the sound from a link on this page.
I’ll now be able to put a face to the sound in the night – and a very nice face it is, too.
What a handsome frog. It’s interesting that it stayed still for you to photograph it. I love all the pics – frogs are my favorite wild creatures – but the expression on its face make the last one priceless!
I think it was a bit confused by two giants buzzing around it, one holding a copy of Cogger (three inch thick “bible” of Australian reptile ID) and discussing its stripes and patterns in loud voices. It was out in the open and didn’t have any immediate shelter to hop to, so sitting still was the best option.
Ha! I wondered if your title was a typo or a joke–I’m used to barred OWLS around here. How about that, barred frogs…I had no idea such existed. What a charmer–love those stripes!
We have five barred frog species in Australia – great (M. fasciolatus), giant (M. iteratus), northern (M. schevelli), M. balbus and M. fleayi (no common names in Cogger).
I found one on 04/16/2012 in my back yard in upstate New York,United States