Author Archives: Susan

06/21/09

Create a backyard frog pond

Frogs lead double lives. They begin their lives as fish-like tadpoles, breathing with gills as they swim underwater, then metamorphose into their adult form, hopping onto land and breathing with lungs. As adult frogs, they have strong ties to water and most need to remain near water to keep their bodies moist.

So what does this have to do with you? In the past twenty years, habitat loss has been one of the main reasons for the decline in frog populations in the US. The housing boom, in particular, destroyed large areas of natural habitat for wildlife.

It is possible to help out your neighborhood amphibians by creating a frog pond in your backyard. As I am not particularly handy with home projects, I searched the web trying to find an explanation of how to do this that didn’t seem impossible. The best directions I found were on the Loudoun (VA) Wildlife Conservancy site. Although I’m not planning to dig a frog pond in my city backyard, I could imagine following these directions and making this type of pond if I had a large backyard in a more rural area.

Some key points:

  • Be patient. If you build it, the frogs will come…ie, don’t stock the pond with pet store frogs or remove frogs from the wild and relocate them to your pond–that could make matters worse. Non-native species can wreak havoc on local ecosystems. Even native frogs could carry diseases that could cause death in local wild frogs. Just create a good environment for frogs and eventually they might appear.
  • The pond should have sloped sides so that the froglets can emerge from the pond when they are are ready.
  • Plant native plants and include lily pads etc (there are lots of water gardening catalogs).
  • Obviously if you have young children in the area, keep the pond fenced off to prevent accidents.
  • Don’t stock the pond with fish–they’ll eat the tadpoles.
Photo by Laura Regnier (courtesy of savethefrogs.com)

Photo by Laura Regnier (courtesy of www.savethefrogs.com)

06/21/09

Literary Frogs

I worked in children’s book publishing for ten years, and we published A LOT of books with frog characters, among them The Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellogg, The Frog Prince, Continued by Jon Scieszka, and A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog by Mercer Mayer, not to mention The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (we published all the Beatrix Potter books). Those are just the few I came up with off the top of my head. I thought I’d catch up on all the recently published froglit, but there are too many new books to list, so I’m reading them all and will report back on my favorites.

It did get me thinking however…the children’s book industry has a vested interest in keeping frogs healthy! So perhaps a portion of the sale of some of these books should go toward saving frogs and other amphibians (after all, there are LOTS of books about salamanders and toads too).

The classic children’s book with amphibian characters is, of course, Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel.

frogandtoad

I was delighted to discover that a new book by Arnold Lobel about frogs and toads has just been published: The Frog and Toads All Sang.

Lobel died in 1987, but his daughter, Adrianne Lobel, recently discovered poems about frogs and toads that her father illustrated with little sketches. Here’s an illustration from the book:

frogs-sang

copyright 2009 by the Estate of Arnold Lobel

06/19/09

Amazing Frog Dads

Most animal dads aren’t too involved with their offspring (human dads, excepted of course). But two species of frogs called microhylids are devoted dads, and in fact, carry their their brood of up to 25 froglets piggyback style through the rain forest of Papua New Guinea. The frogs were discovered by evolutionary biologist David Bickford.

While most frogs start their lives as tadpoles, these frogs bypass that stage and go straight from larvae to miniature versions of adults while still inside the egg. This allows them to reproduce in areas without bodies of water nearby.

After the mother frog lays the eggs, she hops off while Dad watches over the clutch, warding off predators, and keeping the eggs moist for about a month.

copyright David Bickford

copyright David Bickford

After the froglets hatch from the eggs, they hop on Dad’s back. He carries them by night through the leaf litter in the rain forest. The froglets have a free ride until they grow up a bit and can live independently (hmmm…sounds familiar).

05/25/09

Be a FrogWatcher this summer!

This summer, consider becoming a FrogWatch USA volunteer, a Citizen Science Monitoring Program sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation. Participating in this program gives YOU the opportunity to help frogs and toads by collecting information essential for protecting them.

The FrogWatch site has a map of the US that lists local frog species. It also contains information about ordering CDs with frog calls from your region, lists of books to help you identify frog species, and all you need to know to become a successful Frog Watcher. If you’ve always wanted to do animal conservation fieldwork, here’s your chance to do it in your own neighborhood—maybe even your own backyard!

This summer I’ve been doing some informal Frog Watching with my family. We counted 17 small toads on one hike in the Norvin Green State Forest in New Jersey. We also went on a hike in Minnewaska State Park near New Paltz, New York, last weekend. At the nature center there, I picked up a pamphlet about frogs and toads of New York, where I learned that the hearty trilling I heard up in a pine tree wasn’t an invisible bird. It was a tiny Grey Tree Frog with a big voice! We also saw lots of tadpoles in a pond in various stages of metamorphosis.

Wherever you are this summer, keep an eye out for the amphibians!

Gray treefrog clinging to clover. Photographed by Lisa Miller at her home in northeastern Wisconsin. Courtesy of savethefrogs.com

Gray treefrog clinging to clover. Photographed by Lisa Miller at her home in northeastern Wisconsin. Courtesy of www.savethefrogs.com