This photo was from a few years ago in Bedford Reservation here in Northeast Ohio. This park is mostly woodland with a gorge running through it. The photo was of an immature bull frog that was one of many in some flooded tire tracks along the bridle trail.
I found this photo in my email. I was searching for old photos to post to iNaturalist. The message told me exactly where the frogs were found. I was asking a guy who is very knowledgeable about all things nature. He leads extensive hikes in that park.
What was unusual about the location was that it wasn’t close to any water source.
Now, about a half mile away to the south as the crow flies are some houses which could have ponds. But, there is a lot of woodland between the location and houses. There is also a small wetlands with a pond east of Gorge Overlook. But, it is about a half mile away.
Today, while doing a search on streams, I saw a link in the search results to an article on the Audubon website about how fish eggs can be eaten by ducks and later pooped out, and the eggs would still be viable. So, I searched for animals eating frog eggs and, sure enough, ducks and other creatures eat them.
So, it’s possible that the frog eggs were transported via a duck’s digestive system and “dropped” at that location where there was enough water for the frogs to hatch. The only problem is that the frogs were very isolated from any pond. So, they probably didn’t have much chance of surviving. They were probably eaten by something.
Bullfrogs are really good dispersers, especially during rainy weather. I’ve found them in pretty dry situations in the US Southwest where they clearly didn’t breed but managed to find a large rain puddle or hole in the ground with water. I believe they can also estivate if caught in an area that is drying up. I imagine in Ohio they don’t have to go too far to find some moisture.
Your photo looks like a juvenile. Juvenile bullfrogs often disperse from wherever they hatched out, in part to escape predation by big adults.
Frogs are great hitch hikers. We sometimes get frogs in our house because they jump on a person and come into the house that way. Here in Australia they often ride on cars or trucks, cane toads often spread that way.
Seems like there was some significant rain the previous day and into the early morning, followed by a sharp drop in the daytime temperature. The difference in elevation from that spot down to the gorge looks to be a drop of about 225 feet, over a distance of 650 feet from the closest point of the creek. Maybe it found an ephemeral stream nearby to follow?
This is not all that unusual for any reptile or amphibian species. When I was a grad student in the Amazon I once caught a lizard that nearly always only occurs along streams in the rainforest, but in this case was a good 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile (over a kilometer) from the nearest stream. It was a small one, so was clearly just wandering between streams. At other times, I have found things like Sagebrush Lizards out west way far from what I would normally consider suitable habitat. To the point where I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve observed these at some sites despite studying my target species at those sites for over 20 years. I think the general idea is that small animals are often the dispersal phase for reptiles and amphibians meaning one might sometimes find them in places they wouldn’t normally be thought of as occurring.
I do know that snapping turtles will wander miles for new ponds. I have encountered that while hiking. It’s a dangerous thing to do with fragmented habitat. But, they are armored which can offer some protection. Amphibians are squishy and need moisture more that turtles.
It’s a mystery. There are the frogs and toads that live in the woods here: spring peepers and wood frogs. They can live in the leaf litter breeding by using the spring vernal pools. But, these bullfrogs need ponds. It was strange that there were a number of them. So, their eggs were dropped off somehow.
Here are a couple of maps with the closest ponds. The one is about a 1/2 mile away (according to Google Maps measurements). The other is farther away in some housing.
Hmm… The bridle trail is used by the maintenance pick-up trucks. Maybe…somehow…the maintenance crew somehow picked up a bunch of eggs somewhere and accidentally transported them here? The crew works all over this big park, and there are spots with big ponds.
On a totally different note about cane toads: I watched a documentary on marsupial predators in Australia. There is a small group of quolls that seemed to have developed an immunity to the cane toad’s poison and now eat them. Researchers are trying to breed these quolls in captivity and want to introduce these quolls to other populations in hopes that the toads can be a food source for the quolls. This would help to get rid of some of the toads and help the quoll populations.
