WOOD FROGS---"POLAR BEARS" OF THE AMPHIBIAN WORLD

Monday morning March 6th  we awakened to the calling of Wood Frogs.  We had about one month of winter this year from the end of January to the beginning of March.  The 30+ inches of snow we had at the end of January was about all the real winter we had this year. Yes it stayed cold with temperatures in the single digits a couple of times, but in early March the temperatures shot from the 30's to the 70's in just a couple days  and that was the signal to these frogs that Spring is here.

The Wood Frog singing sounds more like barking and is quite loud.  We have 4 water areas and all of them were captured by these amphibians for their annual Spring mating ritual.

I first encountered these fascinating animals when we moved to Mt Gretna in the 1990's.  They hibernate during the cold of winter, but with the first warm days of March they suddenly appear in open water  areas like vernal pools and small ponds and begin to "sing".  I have seen them do this when there are still large pieces of ice in  the water.   The temperature remains at 32 degrees until the ice melts, so I do not know how they are able to stir up the energy to be jumping all over the place like they do.  They are cold-blooded, but something about their makeup allows them to function at very cold temperatures.

When we were in Alaska in 2003  we stayed at a bed and breakfast owned  by Judy Cooper.  She was a musher, had lots of dogs and lived on a large piece of land near Fairbanks in the central part of the state..  When i asked here about the wildlife in the area, she mentioned that she had a vernal pool in her woods and every year she had Wood Frogs appear and mate just as they do here  in PA.  Now the ground  in this part of Alaska is permafrost, so somehow these little guys can survive being frozen, wake up and mate every year.  No other reptile or amphibian can survive that far north, only Wood Frogs.

After about 2 weeks the frogs stop calling and return to the forest leaf litter where the spend most of the year feeding on creatures they find there.  I rarely see them except when mating season occurs.  In a week or two the gelatinous  masses  of eggs will explodes with hundreds of tadpoles that will develop legs and lungs  and join their parents in the forest ecosystem..  So we have  again enjoyed the announcement  of Spring by the barking  of our resident Wood Frogs.