|
|
|
|
Spring Peepers
Wed May 11, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
There are trees budding and the flowers blooming, but for me, there is only one true sign that Spring has finally arrived.
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. Those are Spring Peepers. Or, to be more scientific, Pseudacris crucifer. The peeper is actually a tiny brownish frog, usually about an inch long, from the Hyla family. It has a distinctive "X" mark on it's back, but what makes it distinctive is that it's hardly ever a perfect "X."
When you hear this frog chorus, you are actually hearing the males inflating their throat sacs in an effort to attract females for mating. Peepers live throughout the Eastern United States, occupying ponds, marshes, pine barrens, and vernal pools. On the Internet, you can find reports from Maine to Arkansas, Ohio to Georgia. You can even hear them on Staten Island.
Poet Robert Frost wrote about how they called from a tiny rivulet behind his farm, Hyla Brook, where he says they:
"Shouted in the mists a month ago like ghost of sleigh bells in a ghost of snow."
We call them Spring Peepers, but they can peep from March all the way through August, and even into November. In the winter, they tunnel into shallow soil, where they actually can freeze their body fluids, but not their organs. They are able to thaw in the Spring, ready to attract mates with their song.
So some night soon, hide the remote, turn off the radio (for a while at least), and wander out into the Spring Chorale. You might even get lucky and hear a whip-poor-will.
The Weather Notebook is produced by the Mount Washington Observatory, with support from Subaru, and The National Science Foundation. Thanks to Emberly Hudak for her frog expertise.
Today's Links
More about Spring Peepers
http://www.mnh.uconn.edu/peeper.htm
The Frogs and Toads of Georgia
http://wwknapp.home.mindspring.com/docs/spring.peeper.html
|
|
