Spring time.

Flowers are starting to blossom (even though they’re predicting snow next Thursday.)

Birds are starting to sing (even if I fail at getting good photographs of them.)

And, also, the frogs are getting busy with their mating season…

All around me, at pretty much all times, I can hear the spring peepers singing.

Approach them, though, and they will scatter pretty much instantaneously.

Frogs are skittish, quick, and camouflaged well with their surroundings – all qualities which make them difficult to photograph. Last year, I habitually circled a retention pond in an unfinished housing development, traipsing through weeds, and hearing the splashes of frogs around me as they jumped into the water. Never did I spot one pre-jump.

Never did I get a photograph.

Fortunately, the gods of wildlife photography smiled upon me, such that as I went for a hike in the Easternmost areas of French Creek State Park, I happened upon a puddle that was positively teeming with frog life. I stood there for quite a while, observing and photographing.

As John Lennon once almost wrote, “Happiness is a Warm Puddle.”