Philautus Neelanethrus

That morning I was sitting on the chair thinking of many things. It was mid April. Not even a single leaf was fluttering. Mercury level was rising very fast. No sign of breeze. It was really a boring day. Our cats 'Gunda I.A.S' and 'Kempa I.P.S.' were playing in the garden. It's always a treat to eyes to watch those cats playing. The reflex of their body is amazing. After all, they are nothing but tigers,but in small size! They have shared all most all chromosomes from their bigger siblings. So there is no wonder they possess enormous amount of energy in their tiny body.


Suddenly Gunda I.A.S. jumped and tried to catch something. It was about 25ft away from me. Curiously I went near him to see what is it trying to catch. It was a frog. I went further to check whether I can ID the frog. It was about 2-3cm. And astonishingly it had a blue circle in it's eyes.

Wow! what a catch! Is it Philautus neelanethrus? An endemic frog limited to western ghats. A frog which was discovered just a year back by Dr.Gururaja and his team. I was not sure.
I rescued the frog from the cat and put it on a leaf.


(It may be ethically wrong to grab it's food from it's mouth . But the frog being rare I was ready to commit that.Instead of that I gave Gunda I.A.S. one full glass of milk. ;) )I ran back to home and brought my camera. Tried to make some images. The frog was not wounded in spite of tasting the bite of the cat. It was just scared. I made some images.
As it is a rare specie and it is famous for it's blue eyes I wanted to make an image where I can juxtapose it's blue eyes with something blue in the BG. The first thing I remembered was sky. But as it was already 11o'clock the sky was not not so blue & the image turned pale.
Then accidentally I saw light passing through the leaves making small circles on my viewfinder. I tried to make use of that for the purpose.



It slowly recovered from the happening and started moving from one leaf to other.
I managed to make some images by following it.



I wanted to make some more images, but all of a sudden made a big big jump and disappeared in the grass. I didn't want to disturb it further. So I didn't tried to search it and came back.