Arboretum Frogs

Finished up our story on phenology this week. We had some wonderful confusion in our attempts to id a particular frog . The shot shows a bevy of brown amphibians in the University of Wisconsin – Madison Arboretum's Teal Pond, singing away. It's wonderful "nat sound" and we wanted to use it in the story.

The good folks at the Arb tried to help us out ("Are they brown? Striped?") Finally Arboretum naturalist Kathy Miner offered to help by playing a CD with the calls of the peeper and the chorus frog. They differ. Hugely.

To be absolutely sure, I headed down to the edit bay, called Kathy, had our editor play the amphibian song section, held up the phone to the speakers in the edit bay and waited for Kathy's verdict.

"Those are American Toads".

Oh.

The American Toad

The Spring Peeper