A Froggy Night

I spent a rainy Thursday night last week driving on dark country roads listening for frogs. That probably sounds like fun to the type of folks reading this blog, though it elicited some questioning looks from my family and friends! I and several Rivanna Master Naturalists are volunteering for the Virginia Frog and Toad Calling Survey, a wildlife study coordinated nationally by the USGS and in our state by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Our survey route is in Louisa County, in an area with lots of farmland and forest.

I was telling a new Central Blue Ridge Master Naturalist about our survey a couple of days later, and he asked "With all the different kinds of animals out there, why pick frogs to survey?" Amphibians are often considered biological indicators because, due to their permeable skin and their dependence on aquatic habitats, they are very sensitive to factors such as water and air pollution, UV radiation, and disease. Thus, they are one of the earlier groups of organisms to be affected if a habitat becomes degraded. There is a worldwide decline in amphibian populations and diversity, and tracking amphibian populations is important so that we can better understand and, hopefully, reverse or stabilize this trend. Like birds, frogs and toads call and their calls vary among species. So, surveying frogs is simply a matter of going out to froggy habitat (wetlands, ponds, streams, etc.) and listening for their calls at the right time of year.

So, what did we hear last week? The weather was perfectly froggy--the warmest night in months (staying in the upper 50s F) and light drizzle during most of the night. Rivanna Master Naturalist Becky Minor and I were excited to hear frogs calling at 8 out of our 10 survey stops. There were also frogs hopping all over the roads! The most numerous frogs were the Spring Peepers...tiny frogs with huge voices. We also heard Upland Chorus Frogs at several sites. Their call sounds like running your finger up a plastic comb. And, at just one site, we heard the long, beautiful trill of the American Toad.

Driving on all those country roads at night, we had hopes of some other wildlife sightings, but we were limited to one Canada goose and a Virginia opossum.

Our next survey will be sometime between mid-April and mid-May, when we can expect to hear different species, such as Fowler's Toad.

Many of our Master Naturalists are doing their own frog survey routes in other parts of the state, and many more just keep personal notes on the frogs they hear as they are exploring the outdoors. Please post a comment and tell us what frogs *you've* been hearing in your part of Virginia!