AMPHIBIANS 



Fig. 309. — Bullfrog, Rana catesbiana. 



Bullfrog, Rana catesbiana. — Bullfrogs are green or greenish 

 brown with white slightly mottled under parts, and yellow 

 throats. They look like larger editions of the green frog except 

 that they never have skin folds on each side of the back 

 (Fig. 309). 



Habits, habitat. — Their favorite haunts are in ponds where 

 the shallows are overgrown with pickerel weed and arrow- 

 head, well populated with snails and nymphs of dragonflies 

 and mayflies. They devour great numbers of these as well 

 as worms, tadpoles, and little frogs of their own or any other 

 species. Though less common in small streams than large 

 ones, there are certain little brooks inhabited by burrowing 

 mayflies from whose banks two or three bullfrogs are never 

 missing. Bullfrogs are even more aquatic than green frogs 

 and they never go far away from the water, usually they are 

 in it. They get all their food there, and they are apt to hiber- 

 nate in the same pond where they spent their summer. 



Breeding habits. — The bullfrog is the last of the frog and 

 toad procession to come out of hibernation, and it does not 

 begin croaking in the ponds until nearly June. From then 



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