Wood Frogs Calling

Have you heard a strange, turkey-sounding frog call?

Wood frogs, Lithobates sylvaticus, whose calls have been described as sounding like a turkey call or duck quacking, are adapted to the cold.  They appear very early in the year, emerging from under logs or beneath leaf litter and migrating to woodland ponds, pools, and bogs.  They mate quickly, with all eggs laid in the course of a few days.  

Wood frogs are calling and mating in our area now, so tune your ears and learn the call of these small creatures.  

These eggs, as big as marbles, were found this week in a ditch on the New River Trail Park property.

To learn more about the frogs and toads of Virginia, visit http://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/amphibians/frogsandtoads/frogs_and_toads_of_virginia.htm

What eggs are those?

On a visit to Chapel Hill on March 22 I was astonished at how many spotted salamander eggs/embryos were present in ponds of the area, especially in and near the UNC North Campus site.

If you are not too familiar with spotted salamanders eggs you may not realize that they can present a variety of patterns from clear, to greenish to milky white. The younger egg masses are clear or milky (the latter a variant with tiny crystals of protein in the jelly matrix for some as yet unknown reason). As they age a symbiotic green alga begins to grow inside the embryonic capsules and this is assumed to have a beneficial effect on supplying oxygen to the larvae.

An egg mass of a wood frog (from Grayson County, VA) is shown for comparison- in general they are clear and contain larger numbers of eggs per mass and the individual jelly capsules are more distinct. But they can also get quite greenish as they mature.

Since both of these species avoid ponds with fish they have relatively few places to breed in Grayson County. I think migrating shorebirds such as solitary and spotted sandpipers probably take a considerable toll of the hatched larvae if given an opportunity.

Bill Dunson

Galax, VA