Constable: Sounds of love, froggy-style
None of their mating calls sounds remotely sexy to the untrained suburban ear.
There's the piercing "glick, glick, glick" of the Blanchard's cricket frog. The northern leopard frog produces the same sound as an irritating child fiddling with a squeaky balloon. The love serenade of the Fowler's toad is described kindly as "a prolonged, nasal scream." Similar to the sound some human males make after mating, a "deep, roaring snore" serves as the come-on for northern crayfish frogs. A single green tree frog produces a nasally "quonk, quonk, quonk," but accompanied by a chorus of other lonely males, the call is reported to sound a bit like Will Ferrell playing the cowbell.
"To me, I never feel that it actually sounds like that," Alison LaBarge, zookeeper at Wheaton's Cosley Zoo, says of the descriptions given to frog mating calls. She prefers to let volunteers listen to the frogs and develop their own tools to recognize the calls.
As one of the 127 FrogWatch USA chapters across the nation, Cosley Zoo will train volunteers from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday and from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, May 1, and give them the tools to be official citizen scientists in the program sponsored by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The program is open to all, regardless of where they live. For more information or to register for a session, visit cosleyzoo.org, phone (630) 665-5534 or email Jackie Boquist at jboquist@wheatonparks.org.
"We are able to train volunteers to go out and identify breeding calls of local frogs and toads. We're able to track what is going on," LaBarge says. These volunteers will produce data that anyone can access at FrogWatch.com, and that helps scientists learn more about the habitats and populations of frogs and toads.
Being an official FrogWatcher doesn't require all that much work. LaBarge says recording data for a half-hour at dusk even for a few nights helps. Sometimes families go out together.
"It's a really good way to see the wetlands in our area and appreciate the wildlife around us," LaBarge says. "A lot of volunteers are able to use their own backyards. The majority of amphibians do their breeding in water. A lot of them will breed in temporary water, like roadside ditches."
Way to stay classy, amphibians. But their successful breeding is important to humans.
Often compared to canaries in a mine shaft, amphibians are good indicators of the health of aquatic and terrestrial environments and can tip off humans to pollutants and other woes that might spread to other animals and even people.
Frogs and toads occupy an important link in the food chain - the middle - says Laura Milkert, a stewardship coordinator for The Field Museum of Chicago, which publishes a field guide of local frog and toads. The creatures eat insects and small invertebrates and are an important food source for fish, snakes, water birds and other predators.
"Amphibians in general are in trouble," says LaBarge, noting that one-third of amphibian species are endangered and half are in decline. "Their skin is very permeable. They are more sensitive to minute changes in our environment."
Local conservation efforts have helped.
"Overall, the status of frog populations in the Chicagoland suburbs is reasonably stable," says Alan Resetar, head of the amphibian and reptile collection at The Field Museum. "Land conservation and management efforts by city and county natural resource agencies help tremendously by maintaining and often expanding protected areas containing frog habitat."
As interested as volunteers might become in the sounds and breeding habits of frogs, it is important to keep those areas protected.
"You are just listening. You are trying to stay out of the way. You don't want to disrupt everything," LaBarge says. "For the purpose of FrogWatch, you just want to be a fly on the wall."
Except, of course, that you should have a far better froggy experience than an actual fly.