A Tiny Pond With Some Big Surprises~

Our neighbors Linda and Jeff have a dip in their yard that over time has become a natural little pond and oh what treasures I have found in this little pond the past 24 hours. I went looking for frogs, because it sounds like several banjo players off and on every day, and it is a delightful sound. I crept along the edge and managed to frighten every single frog back into the water before seeing them and got no images out of the water. In fact, I was not seeing any in the water either and then I spotted a Snapping Turtle and that was something that the owners never even knew was there. It is about 8" across the shell, and it was really sneaky, hiding near an open floating log. I did manage a few images with my macro setting. Even with the daylight, the flash kept going off, because it was dark where I was taking the images from, which gives a really neat look to these photographs. This morning when I went back, I noticed a set of red eyes peering my way. I could not believe that in the midst of mud, and decaying leaves and about a foot of water to edge of pond, was hiding a large male Box Turtle. He kept his head above water and was just chilling, while I did my thing. It later disappeared once it became bored with me. I had almost given up on the large bullfrogs that make the awesome sounds, when I saw a glistening gold and brown eye looking above the water. There was a beautiful bullfrog looking my way, and above it on the branches of the fallen trees were beautiful Darner Dragonflies. This little pond was just full of life~