The Weather and the Environment

Bird watchers (with the exception of owl specialists) hope for a nice sunshiny day to head into the field with binoculars, tapes, field guide, and the like, all easily accessible and equally easy to assemble, read, and assimilate in the brilliant sunlight.

Frog watchers, on the other hand, hope for early darkness and cloudy nights. For some species, we might even hope for a torrential downpour (but a soft rain might suffice to make us smile). On moonless nights, we sally forth in darkness, burdened down with headlights, flashlights, extra bulbs and batteries, tapes, and field guides. Instead of flowering meadows, we head for swamps, marshes, woodland parks, and seepages. While there, we slog about, tracking down the snores, grunts, trills, and peeps of the nocturnal creatures we so enjoy. By the time we leave the swamps, our waders ( if we were smart enough to wear them) are usually filled with water that rushed in when we knelt in hopes of sighting a tiny anuran so camouflaged by body stripes that it looks more like dead emergent grasses than a frog.

The Season

Although birds of some sort usually are present all year round, frogs, toads, and treefrogs are much more seasonal. Over much of North America, we see most during the prehibernation time in November, and then nothing until the warming and lengthening days of spring have set in and induced amphibian emergence. By that time, we are more than ready to trudge back to the field, plodding under the burden of all the paraphernalia we think we might need.

The Calls

The calls of the frogs, toads, and tree frogs are as different as those of birds. Most off us know the strident sound of spring peppers, heard over much of the eastern half of the nation. These birdlike calls are voiced with a rising, quizzical inflection to the end. To hear these minute frogs and to see them are entirely different things, however. If you are skeptical, become a frog watcher – and you will be enchanted by the variety of calls.

How to Start

How do you start such a hobby? First, to learn the calls of the creatures you hope to see, you can attend nighttime walks with a qualified naturalist (many nature museums and nature centers offer such field trips). As an alternative, you can buy or download sound recordings on which the calls are identified. We suggest that you do both. While learning to identify the voice of anurans, learn their habits as well. Some frogs call only from vernal pools, others from deep permanent freshwater lakes, still others from river swamps.

Next, learn the whereabouts of these various habitats. Then your new hobby is easy to pursue. All you need is a dark night and heavy rain. Do be aware, though, that frog watching often leads to frog photographing. If you though you were busy before with your hobby, you have not even started!