They don’t croak. I learned this with my own ears last weekend when I went on a tour of vernal pools in the woods at county-owned Muscoot Farm in Northern Westchester.
Frog mamitchkas will schlep almost a mile to get to one of these seasonal ponds, formed annually by run off and rainwater. The pools don’t outlast the warm weather, so they don’t stock fish and thus the frog larvae are spared predation.
It was a bit past peak egg-laying; a week earlier the clucking of the amphibious was “deafening,” in the words of tour guide Paul Lewis.
Unseasonably (whatever that now means) warm weather meant that the hatchlings were now swimming around churning the surface of the water. Scooping up a handful put one up close with the teeming tadpoles.
Needless to say, that scoop was immediately replaced in the pool.
We need our frogs!