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I heard one on the weekend. It sounded a bit lonely, but I’m sure he will have friends soon. But it was just nice to hear one.
The spring peepers have really stepped up the peeping. They went from a few voices in the wilderness to choruses of little frogs over the past couple weeks. The birds have certainly been making noise. And more have been arriving daily. I’ve been seeing lots of pictures of various birds finding their way back for the summer. Various types of sparrows, herons, grosbeaks and there seemed to be an invasion of indigo buntings lately. But I was still missing one piece for spring. The wood frogs.
It tool me several years to figure out the wood frogs. My wife calls them chucklers, because they do almost sound like they are laughing. I always thought they sounded like ducks. In fact, I went looking for ducks on a few occasions. I didn’t find any. Mainly because they were frogs. And just small frogs at that.
It bothered me for a few years. I kept hearing what I thought were ducks. Not outright quacking. Just kind of a busy clucking coming from a nearby swampy area. But when I’d go to the swamp to check out the ducks, there were none. And the sound would disappear. This isn’t a huge area, so they couldn’t have gone far, so I would quietly walk around, looking for these ducks. No ducks. If I stood quietly for a few minutes, they would start again. But it was hard to get a direction from the sound. There seemed to be ducks everywhere. But there were no ducks to be seen.
Finally, I spent some quality time on Google, searching for duck like noises, until I stumbled upon the very sound I had been hearing. No ducks. They were wood frogs. Little frogs about a couple inches long, much bigger than a peeper, but still not very large. But no where near the size of a duck. Since I had been looking for ducks, they might have been right in front of me and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Others have told me the wood frogs tend to appear about the same time as spotted salamanders. Both make their way to wet areas to lay eggs, which is what all the chucking is about, I guess. I question the wisdom of sounding a bit like a duck, because I’m sure a frog doesn’t want to attract a duck as a mate. Their parents would probably not approve, for one thing. But since there seems, from the sound of it, there are lots of frogs around, it must be working for them.
But to me, it’s just another sound of spring.
