What frogs are in your backyard?

 

One of the easiest ways to learn which frogs live near you is to learn their calls. Once you do, it's amazing how many different species you will realize have been there all along! Frog and toad calls are fascinating and very diverse- some sound like sheep, others like pieces of glass rubbing against each other. It's actually very rare for frogs to say "ribbit!"

A great resource for learning frog and toad calls is the U.S. Geological Survey's Frog Call Quiz website. It allows you to select your state (some Western states are unfortunately not included) and it will tell you what species you can expect. Then you can listen to those species' calls. If you're feeling confident, you can then use their state-specific Public Quiz to try to identify frog and toads calls from a recording. This is how I learned the calls, and it's actually a lot of fun!

I challenge you to try and learn the calls of at least three frogs or toads that are native to your state. Once you do, I bet you'll start hearing them everywhere!

And as a teaser, here is a YouTube clip showing one of my favorite calls- the Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toad (Gastrophryne carolinensis). I heard these little guys at one of my field sites just last night!