Northern Grey Treefrog, Cape May Point, Cape May NJ

My friend Rich went out with the New Jersey Audubon Young Birders on Saturday morning of the Cape May Autumn Bird Festival (ZEISS, who we both work for, sponsors the Young Birders), and they found a Northern Grey Tree Frog in a tree on the back side of the trails behind the Hawk Watch platform and the Lighthouse. He pointed out the spot on Sunday morning when he and I walked the same trails. Monday I was back there for one last loop around the trails before heading for Philadelphia and my flight back to Maine, and just for fun, I checked the tree. What do you know? The frog was there, tucked deep into the V where a branch rose at a sharp angle from the main trunk. The Grey Treefrog is small by North American frog standards…this is an adult and is only a bit less than 2 inches long. I was amazed at how well camouflaged the tree frog is. It matched the grey mottled, lichen covered bark of the tree almost perfectly. If I had not known where to look, I would never have seen it. And I had to look twice at that 🙂

I suspected at least some degree of chameleon like ability (color cloaking), so I had to look up the Grey Tree Frog this morning, and indeed, the males, like this specimen, can change through a range of greys and greens to match the bark or foliage where they sit. It is not a quick change like the chameleon, but over a hour or so, the male Grey Treefrog can mimic its perch, provided it picked a perch within its color pallette, most convincingly. What do you know?

Nikon P610 macro at 105mm equivalent field of view. Since it was overcast with limited daylight, I used the flash for an exposure of 1/60th @ ISO 160 @ f5.3. Processed in Lightroom.