Thousand Dollar Croaks

Written by Lang Elliott on March 5, 2011 · 11 Comments

What’s a ribbit, peep, or croak worth? For the sake of my sanity, I wouldn’t dare calculate the amount of money I’ve spent over twenty-five years, chasing after myriad frogs and toads, documenting their calls. But there is one rather unusual frog that I will account for here, a remarkable amphibian that eluded me for years—the timid Crawfish Frog, a chunky, dark-spotted species named for its habit of taking refuge in abandoned crawfish burrows (see range map below). Crawfish Frogs are explosive breeders and can be heard for only a week or so in early spring. Their mating call is a deep gagging snore, a sonorous croak that I absolutely had to snag for my collection.

It was early spring of 2007. I had enlisted the help of John John MacGregor, Kentucky’s state herpetologist. On March 20, John e-mailed me that the weather looked good (rainy and warm) and urged me to meet him in western Kentucky the next afternoon. That evening I threw everything in my car and drove like a mad-man, covering 900 miles from Ithaca, New York, to western Kentucky, so I could rally with John at the appointed hour.

Shortly after dark, we homed-in on a calling group in a wetland in a grassy prairie that had been reclaimed from surface-mining. To my dismay, Spring Peepers were calling so loudly that it was impossible to record. For the next few hours, we drove all over the place, stopping and listening, but to no avail. Then, just when we were ready to give up, a friend of John’s (zoologist Brainard Palmer-Ball) called and informed us that had located a small calling group in a farm pond not far away. We drove to investigate.

The situation was perfect. Several Crawfish Frogs were clustered along one edge of the pond, calling intermittently. Other species (American Toad, Spring Peeper, Upland Chorus Frog, and Southern Leopard Frog) could be heard calling, but they in no way interfered. I was able to get some pretty decent recordings, though not entirely up to my standard. So I stayed in the area for two more nights, searching for other choruses (this included a foray into southern Illinois in hopes of finding Illinois Chorus Frog, but that didn’t work out). The night before I was to return home, I headed back to the little farm pond, and this time struck gold, capturing my best recording of all:

Crawfish Frogs snoring away in a small farm pond, with aggressive stuttered calls. 1am, 24 March 2007, near Princeton, KY. Recording © Lang Elliott.0:00 / 0:00

Granted, my adventure was a clear success in terms of getting a great recording, but how much did it all cost? My trip lasted five days. I drove over 2000 miles (in my gas-guzzling Isuzu Trooper). I stayed in two motels. I ate lots of junk food. The final tally? Well, if I take into account the wear-and-tear on my car, the whole affair cost me at least a thousand bucks, perhaps considerably more.

So there you have it! Thousand Dollar Croaks! OMG! Such is the business of frog and toad recording! Gas guzzling, money guzzling, and time guzzling. But would I do it all over again? YOU BETCHA! I consider myself one lucky man for having recorded those awesome croaks. I only wish my bank account was in better shape. To remedy this situation, I suggest that all of you send your donations to The Frog Recordist Reclamation Fund, PO Box 1000 Bucks, Herpetoillogica, NY. Thank you in advance for your generosity!

range map for Crawfish Frog Crawfish Frog Range Map

Spring Clickers

Written by Wil Hershberger on February 23, 2011 · 7 Comments

It is that time of year when the first frogs will be calling from the vernal ponds and streams here in West Virginia. One of my favorite sounds is that of the Upland Chorus Frog. These beautiful little frogs sing at night looking for mates in hopes of bringing the next generation into the world. Their upward pitched song, a rapid series of clicks, reminds some of the sound made by dragging a fingernail across the teeth of a comb.

I early March of 2009, I heard the following group of a dozen or so chorus frogs near my house. Moving every so slowly and quietly I made a furtive approach to the puddle where they were in concert. I placed the stereo mics close to the ground and very close to the edge of the water in hopes of creating a wide stereo field. Listening with headphones you would think that you were in the water with these guys:

A concert of upland chorus frogs in a vernal pond after dark. Berkeley County, WV. March 8, 2009. ©Wil Hershberger.0:00 / 0:00

If you listen carefully you can hear that there are frogs calling from all around you. The stereo field was accentuated by having the mics so close to the frogs. They were spread out all around this small puddle of, perhaps, 10 feet in diameter.

I hope that you like this recording and the special circumstance under which it was made. The location is now an abandoned ATV race track. I doubt that I will hear any chorus frogs in that area this year – but there is hope that they will return. There is a new owner of the property and no ATVs have been run there for more than a year.

Lost Maples Moonlight Serenade

Written by Lang Elliott on February 22, 2011 · 3 Comments

In early April of 2001, I visited Lost Maples State Natural Area in central Texas in search of Barking Frogs (Craugastor augusti), a unusual subtropical, land-breeding species found in dry, rocky regions from Texas to Arizona.

My adventure began not long after dark, as I hiked a trail that led up a valley next to a stream. I was thrilled to hear Barking Frogs calling from high on limestone bluffs above the trail, but the stream was too loud and the frogs too far away to get a pleasing recording. I tried climbing up to them, but the slope was much too steep and dangerous. So I continued up the valley. The night was magical. It was dead calm. The moon was full (or nearly so) and I was able to walk safely without using my headlamp. The temperature was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21C) and the humidity was fairly high—perfect conditions for the Barking Frogs. If only I can get closer . . .

I discovered a second trail that led up the side of the valley. I followed it up to a flat ridge and sauntered along under bright moonlight. I remember scaring up two small herds of wild pigs, the pitter-patter of their small hooves fading into thick brush. At long last the trail began descending into the next valley, switch-backing down a limestone bluff above another stream course. It was here that I encountered several Barking Frogs and discovered that they were giving their gagging croaks from under large boulders or else from crevices in the limestone. No wonder their calls sounded muffled and resonant. I was pleased to get a nice recording of several males calling back-and-forth, punctuated by the soft chirps and trills of Cliff Chirping Frogs:

Several Barking Frogs calling from a limestone bluff, 1 am, 5 April 2001, Lost Maples State Natural Area near Vanderpool, Texas. Recorded by Lang Elliott.0:00 / 0:00

After gathering a number of closeup recordings, I made several attempts to get a nice soundscape. My efforts generally failed until I droped down to the stream. At 3 am I captured my favorite portrait, a true “moonlight serenade” featuring a single Barking Frog sounding off from the bluff above the stream, with distant cricket frogs and cliff chirping frogs coming and going against the gurgling backdrop:

A single Barking Frog calling from a limestone bluff above a gurgling brook. 3 am, 5 April 2001, Lost Maples State Natural Area near Vanderpool, Texas. Recorded by Lang Elliott.0:00 / 0:00

These recordings bring back my fond memory of walking the trail alone under soft moonlight, enveloped in a unique and extraordinary soundscape so different from what I’m used to back home. I remember enjoying the beauty and solitude, yet I wanted to share the magic with at least one other person. Returning to the campground just before dawn, I phoned a close friend who I thought would understand, and left a hurried description of my experience on her answering machine. The sun rose and the magic evaporated from view, yet a lasting and poignant impression had been made on my mind.

ThunderToads

Written by Lang Elliott on January 30, 2011 · 18 Comments

During our discussion of what makes a recording relaxing, my friend Dorothy Gracey commented that “distant thunder/rain and a soft frog chorus would be heavenly.” So I’ve decided to give her what she wants.

I made the following recording, which I call ThunderToads, in early April of 2000, at Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky (which you’ve probably gathered is one of my favorite places to record). A thunderstorm was passing by, though mostly in the distance. Several American Toads were sounding off from a wetland next to the road, and Spring Peepers were singing lightly in the background. After many rounds of thunder, it finally began raining:

American Toads, distant Spring Peepers, and distant thunder, then rain, 8 pm, 10 April 2000, Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky. Recorded by Lang Elliott.0:00 / 0:00

This soundscape is one of nature’s finest lullabies! The toads are lovely and the distant thunder is soothing. The entire recording lasts a little over and hour. I intend to offer it for sale as a sleep aid. Whatya think? Might this recording help you transition into the land of heavenly slumber? I almost fell asleep while editing the recording for this post!

NOTE: Please don’t listen to this recording using tiny little speakers. If you do, you won’t hear the lovely low frequency rumble of the thunder. I advise using a speaker setup that is accompanied by a subwoofer, or else listen using headphones.

Blue Mountain Frogscape

Written by Lang Elliott on January 25, 2011 · 4 Comments

Frogs and Toads can be a challenge to record. The problem is one of balance. If several species are involved, it is important that their sounds do not compete too much with one another, thereby turning the soundscape into a cacophonous “mush.” It is also important that calling individuals not be too close to the microphone; otherwise their calls may be too loud and overwhelming, especially if many individuals are involved. Loud calls might be okay for a brief recording designed to be used in an identification guide, but they are not okay if one desires a soundscape that the listener will enjoy for minutes on end.

Consider the following “frogscape” recording that I made in the summer of 1997 at a favorite location near Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York:

A mixed-species frog chorus recorded at 10pm on 22 June 1997 in the Adirondack Mountains not far from Paul Smiths, New York. Recorded by Lang Elliott.0:00 / 0:00

This is a fairly dense recording (meaning there’s lots going on). The sounds of four species are clearly heard. The most prominent singers are the Gray Treefrogs (pictured above); listen for their brief melodic trills. Spring Peepers provide the high end, their shimmering peeps adding sparkle to the recording. In addition, Green Frogs give staccato gunk! calls throughout, and a Bullfrog sounds off occasionally with his rum, rum, rum.

Do you like the balance here? I remember being very careful with microphone placement. The biggest challenge was getting some distance from the Spring Peepers, while at the same maintaining good levels of the other species. I think the result is pretty decent. The Gray Treefrogs are not at all overwhelming. The only thing I am tempted to do is lower the Spring Peepers a bit.

What’ya think? Should I fiddle with this recording, or just leave it as it is?

Green Treefrogs

Written by Carl Gerhardt on July 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Green Treefrogs, which are most common in the southern United States, have been a subject of my research in animal sound communication for many years. As in most frogs, the male calls and the female moves to him to initiate mating. Although recording the calls of males and testing the selectivity of females for call variations with playbacks have been the main focus of my research, we discovered early on that calling males do not always get the female.

Earlier this month (June 2010) in southern Illinois, we were lucky to film such action, when a male that was not calling (a “satellite” male) managed to intercept a female heading toward toward a male who was calling. The caller was a bit slow and clumsy, giving the satellite male the opening he needed. Once mounted, the successfully mating satellite male produced raspy “aggressive calls” to discourage his rival. The loser (the calling male) nevertheless tried to join the party, but his efforts failed. You can observe all this exciting behavior in the second half of the following video:

> HD version.

In field experiments we conducted in 1978 (Science magazine, Vol. 200, pp. 1179-1180), we found that nearly 50% of the females approaching a calling male were intercepted by silent, “satellite” males that we had observed sitting close to calling males. The late Walter Sullivan, a famous science editor for the New York Times, likened the satellite male in these situations to Cyrano de Bergerac in Rostand’s play, who wrote poems for a suitor but remained silent himself.

Range map for the Green Treefrog click for large map with color codes

Crawfish Frogs

Written by Carl Gerhardt on June 16, 2010 · Leave a Comment

> HD version.

I first encountered Crawfish Frogs when I moved to Columbia, Missouri to take my present job at the University. I was able to find males during the breeding season by listening for their snoring calls, but I never encountered more than three or four in any one farm pond. In recent years, I have not found them anywhere in the Columbia area. The frogs in the video were filmed in April of 2010 in a farm pond near Kirksville, Missouri. I estimate that there were at least 20 males calling in the pond, which was so small that I could walk around its mowed perimeter in less than 5 minutes. The owner of the farm tells me that he has seldom used fertilizer and virtually no pesticides—this might explain the robust population.

The Crawfish Frog (Rana areolata) is a large, rarely seen frog that lives in prairie habitats in the Midwest (see range map below). They call in late winter and early spring for only a few nights when conditions are just right (usually after the first warm spring thunderstorm). You wouldn’t think that so many individuals could breed in such a small, nondescript pond, but this is probably a testament to the richness of the surrounding habitat. By day, Crawfish Frogs commonly take shelter in the abandoned burrows of crayfish, venturing out at night in search of prey (primarily insects and other invertebrates).

range map of the Crawfish Frog

Even though male Crawfish Frogs do not defend discrete territories in their breeding ponds, they are highly aggressive in repelling other males that get too close to the area where they are calling on a given night. In the video, there is a clip where one male gives three calls that are answered by rapid grunts from the “dominant” male, who then charges! The timid rival quickly dives and swims away well before his adversary is able to locate him. As with most frogs, the advertisement calls serve the dual purpose of attracting a female with eggs for breeding and alerting neighboring males that an area is occupied.

Bullfrog Serenade

Written by Lang Elliott on June 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

There is nothing like a large chorus of Bullfrogs—their deeply resonant and pumping calls soothe the mind into a dreamlike state: Rum, Rum, Jug-o-Rum, Jug-o-Rum. What’s more, neighboring males often alternate their calls to produce an entrancing pulsating rhythm quite unlike that produced by any other species of frog.

On the night of June 3, 2010, I visited a small pond in the Finger Lakes Natural Forest near Ithaca, New York. There I found a group of actively chorusing Bullfrogs and Green Frogs scattered among emergent vegetation in the muddy shallows at one end of the pond (the Green Frogs are the ones going gunk, gunk, gunk). The male Bullfrogs grew silent as I waded into the water and shined my lights here and there to find them. But after a half-hour or so, they grew used to my antics and eventually allowed me to get some extraordinary views of their music-making:

> HD version.

Not only are typical breeding calls featured in the video, but two other calls are also represented. Listen for aggressive “spits” or “phoots,” given by a territorial male when another male approaches too close. Sometimes after spitting, the resident male will swim toward the intruder and give subdued “rum” calls, often in pairs (this happens once in the video, when a male swims off into the darkness). One behavior that I observed but did not manage to capture was a “wrestling match” between two males. After several ceremonious spits, the rivals rose up on their hind legs and locked on to one another with their forelegs, like two sumo wrestlers. For nearly thirty seconds, they pushed chest against chest until the they finally toppled over, the victor on top, and the loser struggling to get free before finally swimming away.

The Bullfrog is named for its bull-like bellowing call. It is one of North America’s most well-known frogs. Widely distributed in East, this aggressive species has been introduced into many areas of the West, where it is disliked because it eats and quickly displaces native species (a Bullfrog will eat most any living thing that is smaller than itself, including small birds!). In some areas of the East, populations of Bullfrogs have decreased due to over-harvesting for frog legs, pollution, introduced diseases, and habitat destruction.

In spite of its notorious reputation in the West, the Bullfrog remains one of my all-time favorite frogs.

Bullfrog range map

Plains Spadefoot

Written by Lang Elliott on May 20, 2010 · 3 Comments

Violent thunderstorms rumbled across central Missouri on May 11 & 12 (2010), dousing the enormous plowed fields in the floodplain of the Missouri River not far south of Columbia.

On the night of the 12th, with yet another storm threatening, we drove the muddy floodplain roads, listening for something “different,” and soon homed-in on a large group of Plains Spadefoots (Spea bombifrons), the males giving their gagging snores from a shallow pool next to the road. We waded into the muddy crucible and were amazed at how lively the calling males were, throwing their entire being into each utterance as if it were the most important thing in their lives (which it is!):

> HD version.

Ranging throughout the prairie states, this population of Plains Spadefoots is near the eastern edge of the range—the species extends down the Missouri River valley all the way to Illinois. As with nearly all species of spadefoots, breeding occurs suddenly and “explosively” after huge rains and is completely over within a couple of days.

I videotaped the singing males and my assistant Beth Bannister did the sound recordings. She had to lean-in close with the microphone in order to overcome the deafening trills of a huge chorus of Gray Treefrogs. Listen also for the calls of Boreal Chorus Frogs and Woodhouse’s Toads in the background.

Fowler’s Toad Portrait

Written by Lang Elliott on May 4, 2010 · Leave a Comment

On the night of May 1, 2010, I camped at the Energy Lake Campground in Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky. I was lucky—there was one site left by the lake and at water’s edge I discovered a large concentration of Fowler’s Toads (Bufo fowleri). As soon as most of the campers had retired for the night, I hauled my gear down a steep slope and got enough footage to put together a nice portrait of the species:

> HD version.

range map of Fowler's Toad Fowler’s Toads look a lot like American Toads, but can be told apart by subtleties in their wart patterns and by the shape of the ridges just behind their eyes. The two species often hybridize even though their breeding calls are quite different. The American Toad has a long melodic trill that usually lasts more than five seconds. It is dreamlike in quality (see my previous blog post The Dream of the Toad). In contrast, the Fowler’s Toad makes a harsh, nasal trill lasting only a couple of seconds. It is hard on the ears and a chorus can be rather overwhelming (although I think they sound nice when heard at a distance).

In areas where the two species overlap, American Toads typically breed two or three weeks before Fowler’s Toads, reducing the chance of hybridization. Hybrid males generally have breeding calls that are intermediate in harshness and length between the two species—they are nasal yet somewhat musical in quality, and have a duration of several seconds. I’d play you an example, but I don’t have one (what, me, not having an example . . . how can that be?). What I do have, though, is a photo of a male American Toad happily mounted on top of a Fowler’s Toad (I believe a female):