The Naugatuck River is Teeming with Northern Leopard Frogs

As I was walking my lately and Chihuahua along the Naugatuck River in Torrington yesterday near the town dog park, my little guy came face to face with something that I rarely see around here - Northern Leopard Frogs, and wow, there were a lot of them.

The Northern Leopard Frog is classified as a Species of Special Concern in Connecticut, according to WildlifeofConnecticut.com, so it's pretty special that this area of the Naugatuck River seems to be teeming with them. Northern Leopard Frogs are found in sections of the Connecticut River, and there are smaller populations across Connecticut, one of them now in Torrington, apparently.

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These are fast little frogs, I tried to get a photo of 4 or 5 of them and they all came out blurry as I got close. The one you see above was less than half an inch long, but they can grow up to 2 to 4.5 inches in length. Female Northern Leopard Frogs can appear to be a bit bigger in size. According to fws.org, Northern Leopard Frogs inhabit slow-moving rivers, still waters, wetlands, human-constructed ponds, and are generally plant-eaters, but may chow down on a dead animal, insects, spiders, and leeches.

The clutch I found of 50-100 babies was located on the new walking trail adjacent to the Torrington Dog Park, and the beautiful new Rainbow Bridge. This section of the Naugatuck River has been extremely still lately and has had very low levels of water flowing through over the past month, a perfect habitat for this rare sighting.