My first fuscus!!

[Mourits Løvholt]

Yesterday evening two friends of mine and I, searched for Pelobates fuscus, and this time we actually found some!!
It's a lifer for all of us, we've only found their tadpoles, although we've searched a lot for them.
We observed 11 in around one hour, and we managed to photograph 3 of them.
Here are some pictures:






Btw; in the same hour we found about 100 other frogs, divided on three species: Rana temporaria, Rana arvalis and Pelophylax kl. esculentus, 9 Lissotriton vulgaris and 2-3 Natrix natrix.
-Not a bad hour

[Mario Schweiger]

Lots of animals, and your Pelobates
Great photos

Mario

[Tom Hoogesteger]

You lucky bastard!
Pelobates fuscus is one of the highest-ranking species on my wishlist! I have searched for them in Estonia in 2008 and in Denmark last year. Both times I heard them calling but didn't see any.
Congratulations! How did you find these? With a net from the pond or did you find them on land?

[Paul Lambourne]

Mourits,

A new species tick is a thing of beauty.. always sweeter when you have had to put in hours of effort to obtain it..As your life list grows they get harder and harder to obtain Congratulations and great pics.

Kind regards

Paul

[Kristian Munkholm]

Hi Mourits,

I'm glad the locality tip worked out for you so you were finally succesful. I tried a number of times myself before finding them the previous night so I know the feeling

As always, my photos pale in comparison with yours but I'll throw in one anyway, hope you don't mind

[Jürgen Gebhart]

Congrats Mourits!!!

I never saw one in nature!

[Mourits Løvholt]

Thanks everyone!

We found them in the water, they were just sitting still on the bottom of the pond, and a single one seemed to be in amplexus with a branch! (I didn't manage to photograph it, but Mathias Holm did, a user in here too, he'll post it later.)

When the garlic toads noticed us, they usually tried to dig themself backward down in the pond like you'll see in this picture:




We did only find males, they were croaking a bit and probably swimming around looking for females, I think the females are still in hibernation or just haven't reached the breeding ponds yet.

Thanks again Kristian, we really appericiate your help!
We've only found tadpoles on our Pelobates fuscus-trips after many hours in the field. Which is nothing compared to our success last night!

Another picture! :

[Kristian Munkholm]

Thanks again Kristian, we really appericiate your help!

You're most welcome, Mourits

...& now get out into your back yard and shoot some spectacular pics of mating green toads for the enjoyment of the rest of us

[Mourits Løvholt]

Mathias and I found about 10 of them and 2 Rana temporaria and 1 Lissotriton vulgaris, no green toad mating yet, no green toad eggs yet.. Only a little bit croaking..
They seem to be a bit slow around me this year

[Kristian Munkholm]

no green toad mating yet, no green toad eggs yet...

What... you must be kidding

This was Monday, some 20-25 km northeast of you:



Nice to see you got out there and found something, though

... & good luck tomorrow, wherever you're going