A friend happened to drop by while I was in the yard over the weekend. As with many days this time of year, the wood frogs were happily chuckling away just a short distance away. After we chatted for a while he looked at me and asked, “What are those crows doing?” I questioned what crows he was referring to, since I wasn’t hearing any crows. He mentioned the cackling sound.
My response was that I had always thought they sounded a bit more like ducks, but I suppose crows could fit too. But they weren’t birds. They were frogs.
He seemed to think I was trying to put one over on him or something. He had never heard frogs like that. They sounded like birds. And he wasn’t talking about peepers. He knew what peepers sounded like.
I explained that peepers were much smaller than these frogs. A wood frog is about two inches long, not a half inch long like a peeper. But they are almost as hard to spot.
And for many years I, like him, thought it was birds. I would hang around a couple nearby swampy areas, waiting for these cackling birds to show up and they never would. Mostly because they weren’t birds. They were frogs.
Since I could never find the birds that were making this noise, I ended up googling the chuckling sound I was hearing. It does almost sound like something laughing at you. Probably because I was looking for birds and not finding any. But when I would get close, they would get quiet. Then I have to stand around very quietly, waiting for them to start making noise again. I still wasn’t able top spot them.
Until I figured out I was looking for something much smaller and much closer to the ground. It wasn’t a bird. It was a frog.
Much like the far smaller peepers, you usually only hear them during the spring when they are calling for mates. Only wood frogs tend to be croaking during the day and peepers more at night. But they are out there. You might be hearing them without even knowing it. They sound a bit like crows. Or ducks.
