Order: Anura
Family: Hyperoliidae
Species: Hyperolius pusillus (Cope, 1862)
Water Lily Reed Frog (Waterleliepadda)
Earlier this year my husband told me that a small green frog jumped onto his shirt while cutting grass on the dam wall. He couldn’t give me more details and I had no idea how small really. From his report I expected a frog about 30-40 mm long.
Soon after that in April 2021 I had a visitor who came to study the water lilies that seasonally grows in the dam and the insects associated with them. The dam only fills up with rainwater run off and dries up in winter. I asked her to keep an eye open for me for small green frogs while doing her research.
It was not long into her wading session when she said she found one for me. A teeny-weeny-dainty-fairy sized translucent little thingy… I also found two of the same size, I guessed 15-20 mm in length, not more. Her friend is a herpetologist and he said the frogs we found might be sub-adults.
From my frog book I identified it as the Water Lily Frog. The next day I went back with the sole purpose of finding them. And I did, because I knew then how they sat with legs tightly tucked in on the sedge stalks. They only jumped away when you touched them. I couldn’t find any bigger frogs than that.
It is NOT an easy task to photograph such small objects, my cell phone’s camera struggles to focus and the movement of the sedges aggravate the situation.
We are in the middle of our rainy season and the dam has sufficient water for various frog species to breed. Two weeks ago I decided to go frogging one evening to see if I could perhaps observe my fairy frogs in their breeding behavior.
I quickly found several and soon I heard a call unfamiliar to me. I realized it had to be my fair frog. It was actually easy to follow the call and locate it.
Now imagine this… wading in the dark in calf deep water through sedges. Then with your left hand hold a torch to light up a fairy frog who is sitting on a moving sedge stalk. Then with your free hand you have to get the camera to focus, keep still and click on the right button to take the picture… NOT easy!
The pictures above and below were taken that night. Note the size of the frogs compared to the sedge stalks.
I managed to take a small video of the call for which I am very, very grateful. It is a series of high-pitched chick-chick clicks.
This morning I donned my pink and purple water boots to check them out again. From this photo you can clearly see how small the sedges are!
The body is almost translucent and one can actually see some of the internal organs. The feet are a translucent yellow that I couldn’t capture accurately with my limited equipment. Some had a distinct yellow-gold colored dorsolateral line, some had tiny black spots and some had both. All of them are just too beautiful!
According to my book about 300 small light green eggs are laid in clutches of 20 to 120 in a single layer around aquatic vegetation or between overlapping water lily leaves. As there are no water lilies yet, one can assume that the eggs will be laid among the sedges in this case. I will try my best to find some and then update this post.
I am curious about what happens to them when the water dries up. I assume they hide in the surrounding vegetation. All I know is that I saw them last year for the first time and they survived to bless me again this year. Go well my tiny friends, till next year!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frogs of southern Africa, Louis du Preez & Vincent Carruthers
Aylestone 8 