5 July 2025

The Frog:

I rarely see treefrogs so I was thrilled when this one froze in place on my brother’s porch in Charlottesville, VA. My husband saw it before I did; he said it was green. By the time I took its photo, above, it was light brown.

I thought identifying it would be easy but Not! Google Lens says it’s either a gray treefrog (Dryophytes versicolor) or Cope’s gray treefrog (Dryophytes chrysoscelis). Both change their skin color to match the background so don’t be fooled by the colors in this side-by-side comparison.

According to Wikipedia they are almost indistinguishable from each other and the only “readily noticeable difference between the two species is the mating call.” The frog was silent.

Could I figure it out by range? Not easy in Virginia. Both are present and their ranges overlap. Fortunately I found the Herping Virginia website with range maps at the county level that indicate Cope’s gray treefrog has not been reported in Albemarle County (location of Charlottesville) while the gray treefrog seems to be everywhere there.

I’ve made this embedded map intentionally tiny so you’ll click to view the real maps at Herping Virginia: Gray Treefrog Complex (Dryophytes versicolor & chrysoscelis).

The Fish:

When I stopped by Duck Hollow on Thursday a man in the parking lot pointed out this huge fish in the shallow water just below us. My photo has no sense of scale but suffice it to say the fish was about 15 feet below us and seemed to be four feet long. The man said it was a carp.

Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) are Eurasian fish introduced in many places around the world including in the U.S. where they were stocked as a food fish. But no one eats them anymore. At this point they are a “nuisance” fish.

Was the fish really four feet long? Wiki says: “The average size of the common carp is around 40–80 cm (16–31 inches) and 2–14 kg (4.4–30.9 lb).”

Hmmm. A Fish Story.