Does anyone have any advice recording wood frogs? Last spring was my
first experience hearing these frogs - They have the most unusual
voices of the ten frogs and toads that call Connecticut home. They
are supposed to be one of the earliest breeders here in Connecticut
as they are said to use temporary pools which dry up by early
summer. I just started learning nature recording last spring, just a
little too late to catch them.
Is it right that they typically only breed for a few days a year?=20
Some of the texts I found so far seem to conflict on this point.
I heard a wonderful chorus on the first evening I discovered them.=20
Two failed attempts recording them on return visits a couple days or
so later seemed to suggest that were very sensitive to ground
vibration or had better eyesight than me as they stopped calling for
longer than my patience and nerves could hold up (same evening a
beaver scared the wits out of me as it began briskly chewing on a
tree probably thirty feet away). Another theory was that on my
second and third visits the temperature was rapidly dropping and they
simply did not start back up because it had grown too cold.
Could wood frogs possibly have a really long cycle to their chorus?=20
Don't some frogs have periods of peak activity where the chorus rises
and falls on something like a 30 minute period? I noticed some
obvious response to jet rumble with another species, Hyla versicolor
(gray tree frog), where they stop calling for a few minutes as the
jet noise peaks. I'm pretty sure I was seeing the same thing with
Bull Frogs. Of course disruptions, people or otherwise, don't seem
to matter as much when the chrous is really active.
Anyway, any advice would be appreciated.
Brian Bystrek
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