Readers’ wildlife photos: frogs in lust

Andrew Sinnott has contributed a pair of lovely frogs, along with the story:

I thought I’d appeal to your amphibian soft spot in submitting this photo for consideration for the website. It’s a pair of Smilisca cyanosticta (blue spotted tree frog I think is the common name) in amplexus [JAC: “amplexus” is the grasping of a female by a male amphibian just before spawning] that I shot in Belize in the summer of 2009.

I was there as a research assistant for the University of Manchester studying Agalychnis moreletii and Agalychnis callidryas and for all sorts of reasons it was really hit and miss if we saw more than a handful of either species, let alone any other, but this night was like a goldmine for an amateur herper! On this six foot wide, four foot high bush overhanging the pond there were maybe eighty frogs, of I think six different species. At one point a colleague held up a two foot twig that had six or seven moreletii males clambering over each other to get to the nearest female.

I snapped a ton of shots and was lucky enough to get this one with my cheap kit lens and flash gun I got for £20 on ebay. I’m particularly proud of it because it’s a shot of natural behaviour that isn’t staged in any way. I haven’t been back to Belize (or any other rainforest for that matter!) but that that trip was one of the best experiences of my life so far.