Surprises and Wonder

Tonight was a night of surprises and wonder. The photo shows the meadow -- up until tonight this year a big disappointment in terms of calling frogs. To date I've heard a solitary western chorus frog give a couple of half-hearted calls a couple of times and that's it. In previous years this was an excellent location frequently with multiple species, but it seems to generally be much drier this year... until tonight!  On my way out to my most distant post I looked in at the meadow to see it before dark and was astonished to find that the river was actually running through it. I'd never seen anything like this here.  Surprise #1.  Surprise #2 -- when I came back through to listen for frogs after sunset, I heard four species here, one of which should have been done calling last month at the latest -- the western chorus frogs, and there were at least two competing for attention here.  This has me thinking that although it's a bit late, things have been so dry in this area of the preserve that at least a couple of them are behaving opportunistically.  Good luck guys! Surprise #3 -- 7 species tonight (thanks in part to the western chorus frogs calling out of season).

In addition to the western chorus frogs, there were American toads out there somewhere, a plains leopard frog not too far away, and an eastern gray tree frog calling from a tree somewhere nearby. All are audible in the recording below.  But before I sign off, the wonder:  the lightening bugs were amazing tonight. I really wanted to capture the beauty of the spectacle but didn't have anything to do it justice.  It was a show just for me and God.

7/23-25/07 Eleven Point River, S.E. Missouri

July was busy and I didn't get out to my normal haunts at all for frog call surveying. I did take a wonderful three-day, thirty-five mile canoe trip with my son Jason on the Eleven Point River in South East Missouri. I don't have any recordings, unfortunately, but although we heard some bullfrogs and some cricket frogs, by far the most common calling frogs were green frogs. They were spread out down the river, normally one per vegetated area along the side of the river. There were sometimes two or three in an area, but across the river or down the river from each other-- never it seems calling from the same patch of plants. Ahh, and the first night we camped at the campground associated with the folks we were renting our canoe from, there was a tree frog in the shower (pictured above)-- an eastern gray tree frog I believe, though the calls I heard were not exactly like what we have here in Central Illinois, but I've been told there are "dialect" differences through the ranges of the varous frogs. Unfortunately, again, no recording.

6-23-07 Shades State Park, IN

Yes, I call this the Frog Blog of Central Illinois, but after a couple of weeks being too busy with family things to get out to do frog call surveying, I couldn't resist posting this recording done at Shades State Park in Indiana while on a camping trip this past weekend with my son Stephen. We arrived much later than we had intended on Friday night and were setting up our tent by flashlight. I became aware of a chorus of E. gray tree frogs at some distance, so though it was after midnight, Stephen and I went for a walk and were able to track them down more or less. There was no direct access to the lake where they were from where we were that we could find at night so the recording is done from the opposite side of a wooded area bordering the lake. In the recording cricket frogs are also audible. When we got near enough to record I was excited to hear quite a number of green frogs calling too, but unfortunately their calls are subdued enough they are not audible on the recording at the distance we were. After tracking down the lake the next day I had wanted to return that night to try to get a good recording of the green frogs, but that night there was a thunderstorm -- not conducive to tramping through the underbrush to the edge of the lake or recording either one.

4-28-07 Pond Near Kingston Mines outside Peoria, IL

Visiting my brother this weekend near Peoria so didn't get to my usual rounds of frog call surveying for the Champaign County Forest Preserve District, but he lives on a lake with ponds and wooded areas nearby. Just in the course of Saturday evening I heard a couple of cricket frogs, a couple of bull frogs, a plains leopard frog, American toads, western chorus frogs and gray tree frogs. The recording is of a gray tree frog and several American toads in the pond across the lane from my brother's house.