Set up the telescope last night to try and catch a glimpse of Comet Neat. Which, if you follow that link, looks nothing at all like the muddy tail-less snowball I was looking at. Still, Venus and Jupiter looked nice and even Saturn emerged from behind clouds long enough for a look see.

While waiting for more darkness (or more comet) the toad symphony kicked in. Every night, a half hour or so after sunset, the toads let loose with a couple hours of high volume croaking. The past two nights, within minutes of the toads starting up, a pair of Canadian Geese have let loose with honks as they take flight from a nearby field. Must be nature's official happy hour.

Since it wasn't dark enough for the telescope I decided to try and record toad audio with the camera's "audio note" function, a rather ill-conceived UI if there ever were one. You switch the camera to playback and then navigate through menus to bring up audio recording functions. Sixty seconds of audio per captured image, if you haven't taken pictures you can't record audio.

I was working my way over to the pond, fiddling with camera controls, and a police cruiser stopped on the edge of the property. I ignored it and got down on my belly to crawl the rest of the way to the pond's edge. I was kind of hoping they'd think I was suspicious (as opposed to odd) and get on the bullhorn,

"You there! Stand up with your hands behind your head and step away from the aquatic creatures!"

Nothing. Meanwhile, at the pond, there were three or four toads swimming about, taking up croaking stations on rocks and in the shallows. They sent big audio ripples across the pond's surface as they sang. The fish seemed to be be enjoying the whole thing.

I probably didn't need to sneak up as they were all preoccupied with the choral procession, but there I was, on my belly, holding the camera out towards the water. One of the toads jumped onto a rock right by my head, at which point I decided it was time to try photography. Luckily they didn't seem to mind when I turned on the flash and got right in their face. I've included a semi-low quality audio clip below the picture so you can enjoy the ambience.

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