When the Night Frogs Sing

Following the clue of a frog call in the dark to uncover answers

Jan 16, 2022

*Pond at Night, Photo by Sam Manns on Unsplash*

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THE PIERCING CROAKY-MUSICAL FROG CALLS grabbed my attention even through the house’s closed windows. The frogs started up in the winter evening with intermittent calls that sounded somewhat like the creak of a rusty spring.

Krek-ek krek-ek or ribbet-ribbet. But wait, there was a long trill mixed into the sound too, which I later discovered is the sound of males warning other males away. I stepped outside in the dark with a flashlight to see if I could see them, but they blended into the nighttime and the obsidian-colored pool of water left after the recent rain.

Nature is often quiet, hiding safely behind a curtain of silence to not draw predators. But these frogs were loud, and when it rained, they seemed to be celebrating the misty drops with frog joy announcements. It turns out those wet nights are the best time for breeding and laying frog eggs that survive.

The power of a name

Who were these frogs? I felt a need to discover their identity. This desire to name is age-old. To name an animal, plant, tree, rock, or river moves us one step closer to it. It helps us define it and distill it down to something we might possibly understand better. From the general category of frog, I wanted to know which frog lived in my yard and what it looked like.

As ethnobotanist Robin Wall Kimmerer says of naming:

It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the way we humans build relationships…Intimate connection allows recognition in an all-too-often anonymous world.

My quest to name this frog drew me into a stream of online frog calls. Not having seen them, my only clue was their sound and the location where they lived.

I listened to dozens of frog calls and was surprised to find each frog species sounds unique. From peeps, squeals, and trills to chirps, grunts, and bellows, the frogs of North America have quite a repertoire. I imagined how an orchestra of frogs would sound, the treble to the bass, a multi-layered concert of frog voices.

Finally, after more than half an hour of searching frog calls, I found them—Pacific Chorus Frogs, also named Pacific Tree Frogs and one of the most common frogs along the West coast. That made sense, as they lived close to the Pacific Ocean and had a chorus-loud voice. These amphibians have a wide range from Baja California to British Columbia, Canada, and even inland.

They sport a color variation running from bright lime green to brown or even reddish, and they can change color based on temperature and humidity. They are identified by their toe pads and a dark stripe that runs from their nostril through the eye and beyond, looking like a slender Zorro mask.

The Hollywood frog heard round the world

Pacific chorus frogs are only about one-two inches long, and it’s the males who make most of the calls as they seek to attract females at night for mating. Their typical frog call is as loud as a human voice. How does a one to two-inch creature make such a loud noise without even opening its mouth?

In frogs and toads, sound is produced when the nostrils are closed, and air from the lungs is pushed over the vocal cords and through the windpipe into the air sac [that sac below their chin that inflates like a balloon]. The air sac acts like a resonance chamber, which magnifies the sounds and makes it louder.”
How Do Frogs Make Sound and Hear it? InfiniteSpider.com/frogs

Since this type of frog is common around Hollywood, where movies are produced, the soundtrack of their chorus calls is often inserted into movies. The result is that the Pacific Chorus Frog may end up in films supposedly set in foreign countries and regions where this frog never set a green toe pad. It’s probably the most famous frog call heard around the world.

The future of frogs

Frog populations have been declining since 1970, and it’s estimated that over 200 hundred species have gone extinct since then. These amphibians, which have been walking and swimming on Earth for close to 250 million years, are now facing threats that they’ve never seen before.

Habitat destruction, non-native species (predatory fish, bullfrogs, fungus, pathogens), climate change (alters temperature and water levels), pollution and diseases (especially chytridiomycosis caused from the chytrid fungus) all have been shown to contribute to the worldwide amphibian declines.
What’s endangering amphibians? Burke Museum

How do frogs impact the world? They hold an essential role in any ecosystem, where they eat large quantities of insects, including ones which transmit diseases (mosquitos/malaria). Tadpoles and frogs also help keep watercourses clear by eating algae.

Frogs are an important source of food to beetles, fish, snakes, birds, and even mammals like raccoons, monkeys, and humans in some areas of the world. They are an essential part of the food chain, and as their population declines, it has a cascading effect on other species.

Fortunately, the Pacific Chorus Frog has a stable population, although a neighboring frog, the California Red-legged frog, is now threatened with extinction.

Discovery

Back in my yard, I recently went out to uncover the top of our hot tub. Oh, there you are! Floating blissfully on the edges of the lukewarm water were three little bright green jewels of color, each one no bigger than a quarter. I recognized the Pacific Chorus Frogs from the photos I had seen online. They had used their tree climbing feet to scale the sides of the hot tub and burrow under the cover in search of more water, the “lake” we provided.

That evening I drifted off to sleep with the occasional krek-ek, krek-ek sounding in the moonlit stillness. It was a reminder that nature’s voices are a part of the rich tapestry of sound that makes up our world. And behind each voice is a creature pursuing its purpose in life. Frog calls are a reassurance that nature continues to create more life.

Mother E