Introduction and Catching up

The site:
We are lucky enough to have an amazing, wild backyard at the rim of Cuenca. It is about 30m wide and 120m long, ending at the shores of the Tomebamba river. The left border is formed by a little but steadily flowing brook. Along the right border is a tiny trench, often also filled with some water or at least moist and overgrown. Both our direct neighbours left and right have a couple of cows grazing on a pasture.
The garden is divided in what I would call "the upper backyard", which lies considerably higher then the rest of it and is pretty dry. There is a little artifical pond, where one can observe tatpoles and dragonflys all year round. The "lower backyard" towards the river make up 2/3 of the backyard and has some pretty moist, almost swampy regions. In the parts of the backyard down there, which usually not get flooded, one can find quite some burrows of bird spiders and cosnequently also several Pepsis wasps flying around there.

Most my observations are from the lower part of our backyard, although one can hear the single "tok" sound more frequently in the upper part (maybe due to it being close to the house) and the breeding ground seems to be only the pond als in that part ofthe backyard. However, males seem to love the righthand fence and can be seen there frequently. Juveniles seem to live close to the river in some big-leafed plants.

Current status:
I am still in the process of catching up with my old observations, starting with a (rare!) daytime observation of a female on 26.01.2019, checking whether individuals have been photographed before or are new to my perception.

I am now up to date until 28.03.2020, which is about the time I when I developed to idea to go on more systematically. So there is still a lot f pictures to be checked.

Prospects:
Unfortunately, on May 2nd 2020 the river completely flooded the lower backyard for several hours and with a lot of force, ripping out plants and destroying the fence, at which many of my Gastrotheca cuencana observations took place. I think, many of the little frogs have been washed away, probably putting an end to my continuous indiviudal observations. So far, until yesterday night, I did not see or hear any frogs in the lower backyard.

Posted on May 9, 2020 09:25 PM by ajott