This red-legged frog had been sitting in the duckweed before hopping up onto a small rock. I wanted to convey a sense of the frog emerging from one world to another, so I placed it at the bottom of the frame with the top third green water, the middle third transitioning from water to earth, the bottom third solid ground.
After having luck finding red-legged frogs at Ridgefield in the summer of 2002, I returned a couple of weeks later and was pleased to find them (and the occasional bullfrog) out and active again, and while none got quite as close as the previous visit, they did present some nice photo opportunities in the duckweed.
Unfortunately, although I look for them every time I hike the Kiwa Trail, I’ve never seen them since.
A day before my birthday in 2002, I came across some red-legged frogs at the edge of a quiet channel alongside the Kiwa Trail at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. It was a nice early birthday present, my only previous encounter with a redleg was the one I found a few months earlier when I heard its awful cry and found it breathing its last as it was swallowed by a red-spotted garter snake. This was a much more pleasant experience — especially for the frog — and I was thankful for the chance to spend so much time watching them as they moved around the pond.
Most of the frogs were either at the edge of the pond or in the pond itself and grew still when I walked up and sat down, but soon enough resumed their hopping to and fro. But I was stunned this one actually hopped up into the grass right beside me. It was too close to use my telephoto zoom, fortunately for me it stayed where it was while I switched to my macro lens, then all I had to do was lean over and take the picture.
This female barn swallow and her mate were building a nest under a footbridge on the Kiwa Trail at Ridgefield in the spring of 2008. Barn swallows build cup-shaped nests out of mud, you can see some of the mud on her beak as she has just emerged from the nest after dropping off the latest mud batch. Males and females are similar in appearance but males tend to have darker chests, in this case the difference was apparent especially when the birds were side-by-side.
Robins are often considered a harbinger of spring, even though they are common in all four seasons across much of the United States. Robins are around in the winter where I live now in Oregon so they aren’t a sign of spring here, but I did at least photograph this male in the spring. With robins, the females do most of the actual nest building, but the males may help by bringing in material like the dried grasses this one carries.