TIMES HERALD-RECORD (Middletown, New York) 13 April 08 May 3's the day to help conduct census of frogs
Cornwall: Unsung as spring heralds, it's about time the loudmouthed frog tribe gets its long-overdue recognition. Birds come and go. But it's the frogs who stick around all year long. Buried in mud. Basically frozen — like the wood frog — off in some leaf litter.
Now's their time to sing. Frogs really get spring going. In fact, wood frogs, called explosive egg layers because they do it in like two weeks — in March — already have laid down the next generation and are poking their masked bandit faces into nooks and crannies for bugs and stuff for lunch.
Still, there's plenty of frog song to come (wood frogs, if still singing, sound like small mammals being strangled).
Your human big frog moment comes on May 3, when Frogwatch USA asks you to go out and listen in the warm (hopefully) moist night air for the calls of our backyard frogs and toads.
Yes, this is yet another wildlife citizen-science census. But it comes with frog voice-overs you can listen to on the Internet before splashing down your street, flashlight in hand and ears peeled.
Google FrogwatchUSA, click on the New York state map and learn the songs before you get out there with the frogs.
The banner frog for spring, of course, is the spring peeper, which sings (some may say yells) from March through June. Spring peepers in chorus sound like they're shrieking, backgrounded by those hand clickers kids used to get at amusement parks. That doesn't mean you can spot their tannish little bodies sporting a characteristic X on their backs (unless they're hopping across the road as part of the other unheralded spring amphibian happening — the march of the salamanders). "You can be deafened by them and be convinced they are 5 feet away from you and actually seeing one is actually quite hard," says a guy who looks for frogs for a living, state Department of Environmental Conservation amphibian and reptile guru Al Breisch.
Peeper music is a really shocking, yet overwhelmingly poetic spring-arrival notice. (Mark you, individual peepers whistle and trill.)
Thus this verse about the froglet's song from once-Confederate sailor, later Catholic priest and peeper fan, John B. Tabb. The peeper sang, he mused, sounds "As if the blossoms underground, a breath of utterance had found."
So the best ID for frogs is their aforesaid song. However, some frogs you can spot, even in gathering darkness.
Frogwatch will be held locally, for one place, at the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum. Call 534-5506, ext. 206, or curator Pam Golben at 534-7781.
This is fun, and frogs need you. They are in trouble worldwide because of pollution, climate change and reasons not well understood. Around here, we've got the endangered northern cricket frog and the southern leopard frog, a special-concern webfoot. (Frogs have permeable skin, which lets in pollution. They also must prevent their skin from drying out or they won't be able to get enough oxygen.)
Who knows, scientists millions of years from now may come across your observations. Don't think so? Well, researchers recently discovered fossilized bone marrow in 10-million-year-old frogs and salamanders in Spain.
And you'll learn a lot. You'll find out that the green frog doesn't say "ribbit, ribbit, ribbit," as a 1950 song would have you believe. Instead, the green frog sounds like a warped banjo string plucked with a toothbrush. And a big info plus for your pets: Keep them away from American toads, which carry poison sacs behind their ears. And wash your hands if you pick up this toad.
To officially take part in the national Frogwatch, sign up with the National Wildlife Foundation and U.S. Geological Survey's Frogwatch Web site (www.nwf.org/frogwatchUSA). It tells you how to submit your observations, which will help scientists in years to come. May 3 is a snapshot day. You can keep doing this for Frogwatch until whenever.
May 3's the day to help conduct census of frogs