I needed something to post for Christmas, but I didn’t have anything, so I thought that I should just post this picture of a tadpole from 2019, but then I waited too late for Christmas.
But anyway, here is the Christmas tadpole. It’s either a Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) or a Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans). (I once read an explanation of how to tell the difference between the tadpoles of these two species by the distribution of black spots on the body, but I can’t seem to find that reference.)
And, in a way, this could be a Christmas tadpole; most other frog species start as eggs in the spring, and then change from tadpole to adult after a few months. But the Green Frog often spends a year in the tadpole stage, and in this area the Bullfrog spends two years as a tadpole, and thus there would be individuals of both species still in the tadpole stage as December comes to en end, which it is doing now.
