Froggy Goes a Courtin’ and Serenades the Neighborhood

You hear them, croaking so loudly you think your home must be surrounded by an army of frogs (point of fact, a group of frogs is called an army). In reality, there may be only a handful of the booming-voiced amphibians.

The tiny Pacific treefrog is the most common amphibian on the West Coast. Every year as soon as the temperature rises into the high 40s, the frogs come out and start to sing, en masse; a choir of chirping, croaking, lonely males.

“They are trying to attract females to the area they’re in,” said Lisa Hallock, herpetologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “That can be a pond, or just a mud puddle.”

Indeed, part of the frog’s survival success is its ability to breed and lay eggs in nearly anything that contains water. Every roadside ditch, storm pond or mud puddle may harbor a treefrog, Hallock said.

“This frog is everywhere,” said Adam Leache, assistant professor of biology at the University of Washington and curator of herpetology at the Burke Museum. “They are very adaptable."

For having such a booming voice, the treefrog is very small, usually no bigger than an inch or two. Their native range is vast, from British Columbia to Baja California, and from the Pacific Ocean to Nevada. Adaptable, the frogs are found from sea level to more than 10,000 feet, in habitats from the desert to the redwood forests.

Because the weather here in Woodinville warmed up a bit early, the frogs have been out and in full voice since the last week in January and will be calling for a female well into spring, according to Hallock. If we get a brief spell of cold weather, the frogs will just burrow down into the mud and wait it out, she added.

The treefrog can be identified by a black stripe on either side of its face. This stripe can be seen on every frog despite its ability to change color. It changes colors based on temperature and humidity, part of its survival strategy. They have sticky pads on their toes making it easy for them to climb pond plants and trees.

Here is another fun tidbit: next time you’re watching a movie with frogs in the soundtrack, you’re probably hearing the Pacific treefrog, whether the scene is taking place in a cedar forest in Washington or the bogs of Arkansas.

“It can be very distracting,” Hallock said. “I completely lose the momentum of the film because I’m thinking ‘that frog wouldn’t be there.'”

The treefrog has different calls for different situations. Its come hither call is a two part “kreek-eeck” sound, according to Hallock. Whichever male frog is the loudest gets the girl.

“Somehow the female is able to zero in on the one male that is the loudest,” Hallock said. “I guess she figures the male with the loudest call is the strongest.”

And the stronger the male the better genetic material for the female to pass on to her offspring.

The other call, a kind of trilling sound, is the “back off she’s mine” call, warning another male treefrog who has gotten too close to hop along to another pond. The problem with this call is it scares away the females who are only interested in mating, not in watching two males fight.

Once mating occurs and the female lays her eggs (usually in clusters of 100), it only takes less than two weeks for tadpoles to emerge. The tadpoles are easy prey for raccoons and garter snakes. But that’s not the only obstacle to maturity for the tadpole, because mom lays her eggs in any pool of water. No matter how ephemeral, the tadpoles watery home can easily dry up. When that happens, there is one less male for next spring's choir.