Mid-day Toadsong ... it's wet again here at PFHQ.

If you've been watching the news or (looking out the

window here), you may have noticed that Florida has been getting soaked by a stalled front that became a slow low pressure system.

Here at Pure Florida Headquarters  (PFHQ), the result of all this is a greatly rejuvenated pond and near constant frog song.

In fact, our pond has gone from almost dry to ... um, about half full in the past 2 weeks.

Awesome!

I'm not the only one who's happy about it.

The local amphibians are really, really hoppy  happy about the new water.
At night, the tree frogs, especially the green tree frogs have been calling loud and proud. Night is usually a mixed bag of species calling, but the greens have been the dominant nocturnal singer.

The trails in the pond duckweed above belong to another amphibian, one who suddenly appeared in the middle of an incredibly rainy day.
It was their singing that brought me down from my dry house to crouch in the tall grass along the rainy shore of my pond.
You see, NPR and Cornell University have put out a call for recordings of critters in our neighborhoods and I wanted to play... I'm a big fan of citizen science.
Get involved people!


The deal is, you record some critter noise and send in your recording to:
nprcrowdsource@npr.org
with the subject line:
"Decoding Nature".

Get the details at NPR.

Then the wizards at Cornell will try to identify your critters.

I wanted to send an audio file of the racket my pondphibians were making, so I grabbed the cell phone and headed down to  the pond.

Here's the singer .. "Old Golden Eyes".

(Note lower left corner photo bomb by an unfortunate caterpillar that fell from the black willow tree above).

The pond was full of these Eastern Spadefoot Toads,(Scaphiopus holbrookii) a mostly subterranean species that I only encounter during the mating rush as on this day, or sometimes when I'm digging in the yard.

This is what they were crowding in my pond for ... "Amplexis" ... Latin for "embrace".

The smaller male has latched on to the larger female so he can be the one to fertilize her eggs when she decides to release them.

There were spadefoots everywhere calling, swimming, clasping ... it was pretty spectacular. This pond is near perfect for amphibian reproduction.
It's shallow, with lots of shoreline and edge cover, partially shaded by black willows, and almost devoid of fish larger than Gambusia minnows. (There are a few random bluegills).

Amphibians are having a rough time of it these days.
The reasons are many, ... loss of habitat, a thin skin that is super permeable to pesticides and other chemicals, and exotic fungi that have a very real and very scary potential to wipe out entire species.

Tiny intermittent ponds like mine are an essential part of the life cycle for many frogs, toads, and salamanders.
Our own small pond has hosted, newts, tiger salamanders, green tree frogs, barking tree frogs, grey tree frogs, cricket frogs, bullfrogs, eastern toads, pigfrogs, leopard frogs, and of course the spadefoots.

Those are just the species I've seen first hand down there, I imagine the gopher frogs find their way down to the pond also ... I just haven't caught them in the act.

Shallow ponds have sprung up all over our swampy Florida county with a week of very heavy rains.
This could be a rebuilding year for our smooth skinned herps.

Let's hope so.

Below is a VERY short video of an Eastern Spadefoot singing its little 3-chambered heart out.
Enjoy!