Outdoors Journal: Cricket frogs calling

Post date: Apr 1, 2011 1:01:48 PM

Star Tribune

By JIM GILBERT

last update: April 1, 2011 - 12:50 AM

By the end of March, the swamp cricket frogs, also called western chorus frogs, usually can be heard calling from grassy ponds and roadside ditches. The great volume of the mating trills produced by these tiny frogs, which have bodies a little more than an inch long, suggests that it is coming from much larger frogs. The sound is like a metallic clicker.

It's the males that call, and I have watched them at night with the aid of hip boots and a flashlight. Only their tiny heads, with extended bubble-like throat sacs, stick up above the water. With many males calling in a small pond, their combined chorus is continuous and quite deafening, but in the daytime the slightest disturbance causes them to remain quiet. A person walking near a pond of singing frogs causes the chorus to stop short. Just stand perfectly still for a minute or so, and the chorus will begin again.

JIM GILBERT