Below our windows, this Florida leopard frog was on the prowl for insect drawn by the lights.
Darkness. Thunder. Lightning. Ferocious rain. Nervous dogs. Moths drawn to the window screen by the lights. I sat here watching 2 pretty, fair-sized moths, wondering whether they would leave in the rain. A kerthunk! and before my eyes one moth disappeared. It didn't walk away. It didn't fly. It was just gone, Another kerthunk and the 2nd moth disappeared, What the...? So I walked out, got soaked, and initially saw nothing. 2 screens down another moth landed. A patch of dirt exploded and the moth disappeared. Beneath the window sat a well camouflaged Florida leopard frog, Rana sphenocephala utricularia. If the rain weren't in my eyes I'll bet I would see the anuran smacking its lips. I wonder if my soaked camera will ever work again?

Besides these 2, we saw several other Carolina "sandhill phase" pygmy rattler on this trip.

Initially our photo-target was the carpenter frog, Rana virgatipes. We had both seen this little ranid on many occasions but it just seemed time to upgrade photos.

But as Jake and I often do, by only an hour later as we had crossed into Georgia, our photo-target list had grown to encompass three additional taxa, Carolina pygmy rattlers Sistrurus m. miliarius, of the Sand Hills phase, just for the heck of it, a southern copperhead, Agkistrodon c. contortrix, and a small, still undescribed two-lined salamander lookalike, Eurycea species. As it turned out, we were successful on all but the salamander.