American Toads Calling
Most of us are familiar with the American toad’s breeding call – a long trill that advertises his presence to potential mates in the area. However, American toads have three other calls, as well. A shortened version of the courtship trill, which sounds like a chirp, is given by male toad with its vocal pouch just slightly inflated. A second, release call, is often heard when a male is clasped by another male. (If you want to hear it, just pick up a male toad during the breeding season – it will vibrate as it chirps right in your hand. The combination of the call and the vibrations usually causes a clasping male to release his grip.) A fourth call, which has been recorded in the lab but not in the field, is a series of quiet clicks given by the male while clasping a female.
Pickerel Frogs Calling
If you’ve spent time at a pond recently and heard what sounded like someone snoring, you weren’t hallucinating! Male pickerel frogs have started calling to attract mates, and each species of frog, just like birds, has its own distinctive call. Spring peepers peep, wood frogs clack and pickerel frogs snore. Their snore isn’t long – it only lasts a second or two — but it’s unmistakable. Pickerel frogs call from under water, as well as on top of mounds of vegetation, so if you hear one and then search for it, it’s very possible you may not find it. (My sincere apologies-computer failure prevented me from posting on the previous two days.)
Spring Peepers Mating & Laying Eggs
The mating season for spring peepers lasts two months or more, and judging from the sound that is coming from ponds and woodlands these days and nights, it is in full swing. Once a singing male is successful in attracting a female, he mounts and clasps her while depositing his sperm on her eggs. She lays up to 800 eggs, either singly or in small groups, on plants within the male’s territory. The frogs remain joined (a position known as “amplexus”) for up to four hours. After egg-laying and fertilization is completed, the female peeper returns to the woods; the male remains at the pond and resumes singing.
Frog Vocal Sacs
“Peeps” and “quacks” fill the air these days. How is it that these frog calls travel so far? It’s all thanks to a thin membrane , or sac, that most frogs have. Note the single inflated sac of the spring peeper, and the paired sacs on either side of the wood frog’s head. These vocal sacs act as resonating chambers, causing the male frog’s mating call to be amplified and carried far (some species of frogs can be heard over half a mile away). Most frogs have one of three basic types of vocal sacs: a single throat sac (the most common), paired throat sacs (partially separated by connective tissue) and paired lateral sacs (completely separate chambers on either side of the head). Vocal sacs are outpocketings of the floor of the frog’s mouth. When calling, a frog closes its mouth and nostrils, and expels air from its lungs through the larynx and into the vocal sacs. The vibrations of the larynx emit a sound which resonates within the vocal sacs. The frog continues calling as muscles within its body wall force the air back and forth between the lungs and vocal sac. The thickness of the vocal sac wall in frogs varies. Typically, small frogs that call in the air (spring peeper) have thin vocal sac walls, whereas those that call in the water, particularly large species (green and bull frogs) often have thick-walled vocal sacs that appear swollen, not inflated like a balloon, when filled with air.
Spring Peepers Emerging
Sitting on top of the snow, still as a statue, a spring peeper gathers strength to make the long trek to open water, where, if it is a male, it will exercise its voice for the first time in many months. Like the gray treefrog and wood frog, spring peepers can freeze as solid as a rock for several months during hibernation and then, on a warm day, thaw out in a few hours and resume a normal, active life. The formation of glucose and ice crystals that form outside of cells enable this phenomenon to occur. Once hibernation has come to an end, peepers seek out wetlands, vernal pools and ponds to breed and lay eggs before they return to their home on the forest floor.
A Great Christmas Present!
If you’re looking for a present for someone that will be used year round, year after year, Naturally Curious may just fit the bill. A relative, a friend, your child’s school teacher – it’s the gift that keeps on giving to both young and old!
One reader wrote, “This is a unique book as far as I know. I have several naturalists’ books covering Vermont and the Northeast, and have seen nothing of this breadth, covered to this depth. So much interesting information about birds, amphibians, mammals, insects, plants. This would be useful to those in the mid-Atlantic, New York, and even wider geographic regions. The author gives a month-by-month look at what’s going on in the natural world, and so much of the information would simply be moved forward or back a month in other regions, but would still be relevant because of the wide overlap of species. Very readable. Couldn’t put it down. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the natural world, but there was much that was new to me in this book. I would have loved to have this to use as a text when I was teaching. Suitable for a wide range of ages.”
In a recent email to me a parent wrote, “Naturally Curious is our five year old’s unqualified f-a-v-o-r-I-t-e book. He spends hours regularly returning to it to study it’s vivid pictures and have us read to him about all the different creatures. It is a ‘must have’ for any family with children living in New England…or for anyone that simply shares a love of the outdoors.”
I am a firm believer in fostering a love of nature in young children – the younger the better — but I admit that when I wrote Naturally Curious, I was writing it with adults in mind. It delights me no end to know that children don’t even need a grown-up middleman to enjoy it!
Immature Common Merganser Diet
Common Mergansers are primarily fish-eating ducks. Young mergansers require over half a pound of food per day during their first summer, and often supplement their fish diet with insects, mollusks, crustaceans, worms, frogs, small mammals, birds and plants. The pictured immature Common Merganser had just downed a crayfish when it spotted a frog which it succeeded in catching and eventually swallowing.
How Toads Breathe
Like all amphibians, toads breathe through their skin as well as with their lungs. When a toad is inactive the skin usually absorbs enough oxygen to meet its needs. During and after activity a toad often supplements its supply of oxygen by actively breathing air into its lungs. Unlike mammals, amphibians do not make regular and rhythmic breathing movements but bring air into their lungs spasmodically as the need arises. Air enters the toad’s mouth through its nostrils, and by raising the floor of its mouth, the toad forces the air into its lungs. (Photo is of an American Toad.)
Spring Peepers Still Calling
Although Spring Peepers emerged from hibernation about two months ago, on warm nights the males are still advertising for mates and will continue to do so into June. Let your ears guide you to the peepers as they call repeatedly, often while perched on low vegetation near water. Armed with a flashlight, look for the movement of their vocal sacs as they inflate and deflate as the peepers sing.
Spotted Salamanders Emerge From Hibernation
Under the stealth of a rainy night, subterranean-dwelling spotted salamanders migrated to their ancestral breeding pools this week. Groups, or “congresses,” of males gather, followed by females. Once a female locates a congress of males, she eventually pairs up with one of them. The pair of salamanders then engages in a courtship dance ending with the male depositing a tiny white packet of sperm called a spermatophore on the bottom of the vernal pool. If he has sufficiently stimulated the female, she picks up this packet into her cloaca, or vent, and fertilization takes place. The next morning the only sign that spotted salamanders have been and gone are the unclaimed spermatophores scattered on the leaves that lie on the pool bottom.
Spring Peepers Calling
I heard my first peeper on March 18th, roughly two weeks earlier than in past years. These tiny members of the treefrog family begin mating rituals shortly after the end of hibernation. The males gather at small pools by the hundreds. Each male establishes a small territory and begins calling the familiar high-pitched “peep” quite frequently. The louder and faster he peeps, the better his chances are of attracting a receptive female. Males usually compete in trios, and the male with the lowest-pitched call usually starts the vocal competition. If you look closely at the peeper in the photograph you can see some snow fleas hitching a ride.
Naturally Curious wins National Outdoor Book Award
I am delighted to be able to tell you that this morning I learned that NATURALLY CURIOUS won the Nature Guidebook category of the 2011 National Outdoor Book Awards. I’m honored and humbled by this recognition. http://www.noba-web.org/books11.htm
Spring Peepers Calling
You may well have heard the single “peep” of a male spring peeper emanating from the woods recently. It does seem odd to hear this call now, often far from water, as we associate it with spring courtship. This phenomenon occurs so regularly in the fall that herpetologists have given it a name – “fall echo.” They speculate that peeper calling is spurred by light and temperature conditions, when fall climate conditions are similar to those of spring.
American Toadlet
American toads mated and laid their eggs in ponds about a month ago. Those eggs hatched and now the tadpoles are beginning to transform into tiny toadlets. For several days after developing legs and lungs they can be found in clusters on the shore of the pond from which they emerged. Gradually they disperse to the surrounding land. No bigger than your smallest fingernail, they look like miniature adults, warts and all.
Pickerel Frog
Next to the green frog, the pickerel frog is the most abundant frog in New England. It is often confused with the northern leopard frog, which it closely resembles. The spots on a pickerel frog’s back are squarish and aligned in rows, whereas the leopard frog’s spots are rounded, and randomly scattered over its back. In addition, the male pickerel frog has bright orange on the inner surface of its hind legs, which the leopard frog lacks. The pickerel frog is very sensitive to pollution, so its presence is indicative of good water quality.
Green Frogs Calling
Male green frogs have recently started calling their rather explosive loose banjo string call. Sometimes there is a single note, or often several are issued. Scientists have actually differentiated six different calls. Green frogs have paired vocal sacs which act as resonating chambers, as do the wood frog, northern leopard and pickerel frogs. Unlike American toads, spring peepers, bullfrogs and gray treefrogs, whose single pouch bubbles out beneath their chins when they call, the inflated pouches of the green frog aren’t that obvious. There is a slight swelling of the throat and sides of its body when it is calling, which you can hopefully detect in the accompanying photograph.
American Toad Eggs Hatching
American toad eggs are hatching, and as they do so, thousands of tiny, black tadpoles attach themselves to underwater vegetation and hang vertically, with their heads up. In a week or so, they will crowd the edges of ponds in dense aggregations. Research shows that the tadpoles from the same egg mass tend to stay together as a “school” during this stage. In roughly three weeks, they will begin to transform into tiny toadlets.
Spring Peepers Still Calling
Although spring peeper courtship in Vermont peaked about two weeks ago, they are still calling with gusto in flooded meadows and on the edges of ponds. Two different calls can be heard – one is aggressive, as the peeper is defending a territory roughly 4 to 16 inches in diameter (a trill of varying length) and the other is advertising for a mate (a single high note). Researchers have found that a male spring peeper repeats his advertising call about 4,500 times on any given night during the breeding season.
Red Efts
Because of all the rain we’ve had, little orange salamanders are everywhere! These red efts have a fascinating life history. Eggs are laid in a pond,
and hatch into larval salamanders referred to as eastern newts (previously
called red-spotted newts). Eventually the larvae shed their gills, grow lungs, turn reddish-orange and crawl out onto the land, where they are called red efts.
After spending three to seven years on land, they turn olive-green
(still maintaining the red spots they possessed as red efts) and return to the
water, where they spend the rest of their lives and are referred to once again as
eastern newts.
American Toad Eggs and Eastern Newts
Given the number of predators that eat American toad eggs, it’s not surprising that female American toads each lay between 4,000 and 12,000 eggs. Even though toads often avoid breeding in fish-inhabited ponds, there are plenty of other egg-eating creatures, including eastern newts. If you live near a pond where you’ve heard toads trilling recently, look for their three-foot-long double strings of eggs in shallow water, intertwined in vegetation. Chances are great that you will find something dining on them.
American Toads Mating
All the trilling he did paid off for the male American toad in this photograph (top toad), as he succeeded in attracting a female. The smaller male toad climbs on top of the larger, reddish female toad, clasps her behind her front legs, locks his thumbs together, and externally secretes his sperm on her eggs as she lays them. This mating position is referred to as “amplexus.” The female’s eggs (there are usually several thousand) are laid in two strings, one from each of her ovaries (eggs are vaguely visible to left of toads). Within a week they will hatch into tiny, black tadpoles.
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