Once we had dropped off our belongings, we traveled to the refuge and spent the first part of the afternoon hunting for frogs. And we found many! There were green frogs, pickerel frogs, leopard frogs, and some wood frogs. I am not sure which frog is in the first photo below, but the second one shows a pickerel frog, which is similar in appearance to the northern leopard frog. The pickerel frog is more apt to have two organized rows of squarish spots, however. The third photo is that of a green frog with blue coloration. The bucket in the next picture is full of green frogs, while another green frog is pictured chilling in a pond and being held. It's ideal to hold a frog from their hind legs to prevent harming their soft bodies and to keep them from attempting to jump away.
We spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to find snakes but only came across one eastern garter snake, which I did not get a good photo of. We left the area to return back to the camp area and spent the early evening relaxing before going out again that night to find more frogs. During the night outing, we found more green frogs and many bullfrogs. The frog in the picture below is a large male bullfrog, which can be discerned from the yellow throat and the large tympanum behind the eye. To tell the difference between green frogs and bullfrogs, you need to observe the dorso-lateral folds along the back, leading down from the eye. It continues almost completely down the length of a green frog while stopping short and curving behind the tympanum of a bullfrog.
That outing ended the first day and led way to a very cold night spent in sleeping bags that did not offer hardly any warmth.
