First Frog Survey

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I wanted to write about my first time doing a frog survey, so here goes.

It was about a month ago that I actually did it. Whoops. Sorry for the time delay. Anywho, on a wednesday night, around the end of april I believe, Scott was going to be conducting a nationwide frog survey on the refuge and so I asked if I could join him. I had choir rehearsal that night so I had to join him after he had already started. Ended up that by the time I got out into the field, he was finished with 3 of the points.

The first point I went to with him, I thought maybe the frog survey wasn't really all that exciting. The spot was on the refuge, but very near the highway, and so the sounds of traffic made it difficult to hear any frogs. I really only heard one call, and I think according to Scott there were only 2 or 3 species that he heard. But all the other points after that were much more exciting.

Here is what the survey basically consisted of. Driving to an already established point on the refuge, getting out of the truck, starting a timer, and then turning off all lights and standing in the dark for 5 minutes, listening to see how many different frog species we heard, and then approximately how many frogs of each species we were hearing (either just a single frog, a few frogs, or a whole chorus). We also marked down what the noise level was (as far as traffic or other things that would make it difficult to hear the frogs) and what the temperature and wind levels were like.

By the end of the night I had heard I think about 8 or 9 different species of frogs and I felt that in the short period of time (2.5hrs) I learned quite a lot! My favorite species that we heard was the Pig Frog. Yup. It sounds just like the name suggests. Sounds like a pig snorting. Fantastic. Never ceased to be hilarious every time we heard it. 😊

Once again, the experience showed me just how much I love working at night. Even though my day had started around 5am and so I was quite tired, I still had a blast. I just love being outside at night. It is a completely different world. The refuge was beautiful at night.

All in all, it was an awesome experience. They do one more frog survey, sometime in June, and I am hoping that he will let me go again. Ingrid is technicially supposed to help out on the next one since I did the other one, but I figure I could just go to experience it again. Scott is pretty cool so I'm figuring he wont care if I tag along again. 😊

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