I suspect lots of nature lovers have a story about how they learned the identity of the animal making the calls from last week’s puzzler. My husband, who is a birder, tells the story of how he was in a canoe on a lake and was hearing the very loud chorus of quacking sounds in the distance. What ducks were making those sounds, he wondered. He paddled towards the chorus but as he arrived where he thought was the right spot, the quacking abruptly stopped. But no ducks flew off. And no ducks were anywhere to be seen. Well then, where did they suddenly all go?
I have a similar story of a time when I was working as a naturalist at a small nature center in eastern New York State. One day in early spring I went for a walk and at one point, heard lots of quacking coming from over a small rise. Like any good naturalist I went to investigate, quietly walking up the hill, hoping to catch sight of the ducks making all that noise. However, when I got to the top of the hill, the calls stopped. But I didn’t see any ducks fly off! Where did they go? I returned to the nature center to tell the story to my boss, Beth, who smiled knowingly and said, “Those were the calls of wood frogs.”
I have written numerous posts through the years about wood frogs, but interestingly, have never featured them in a puzzler. Today is the day!
Wood frogs are amazing creatures for many reasons, the most interesting to me though is that in winter they freeze solid. Know how they can do this and still survive? Here’s a post called Ten Things You May Not Know about Wood Frogs that will give you more information about that and other things, if you want to learn more.
For now, let’s watch a video and see some photos of what wood frogs look like:
Have you heard the quacking calls of wood frogs where you live yet? Have you ever seen an adult frog while out walking in the woods?
Schedule some outdoor time soon to get out there and see what’s going on… you never know what interesting things you will find!
Check out our next puzzler–this one another animal track in snow. Do you recognize it?