My Morning Friend

 This big fellow has been greeting my every morning on my walk from the lower parking lot to the upper campus for about 3 weeks now.  It takes practice to spot a green frog surrounded by green vegetation.  On any given day, depending on some combination of sun, humidity, temperature, insect activity, and who knows what else, the bullfrog might be particularly sensitive to my approach and submerge before I take my first shot, or he might not budge and let me get within a foot.  Today, for some reason I thought he'd jump, so I took another photo with every stride.  He never did submerge.

 When that happens, I momentarily wonder if he's sick or dead.  Then I saw the throat pulsing with each breath. 

 I'll pass this fellow again on my way home after lunch.  By then the temperature might be approaching 90.  That could be good for insect activity, but it might be too hot for him.  If this guy hangs around for another week or two, I hope to catch him in the act of catching a dragonfly.

This morning's brief photo session interrupts my sequence on wildflowers in the vicinity of Oakland Camp.  I hope to post the last two batches of photos from last week's outing some time today.  Then, I have some new material from a quick trip down Feather River Canyon yesterday.  The most exciting new arrival for me was the Gum Plant down by Jarbo Gap.  It'll be another couple of weeks before they bloom in Quincy, so when I get impatient for the arrival a particular species of flower, it's nice to be able to find it somewhere down the canyon.  I also managed to get some shots of the Bush Monkeyflower which won't last much longer in this dry heat.
Another nice feature of living in Quincy is that if I miss the cycle of a certain wildflower, I can usually drive in the other direction, toward Reno, gain a couple thousand feet in elevation, and find the same flower experiencing its spring arrival when it's already summer in Quincy.