• Columnists

Volume cranked up with sounds of spring

• John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
• March 26, 2021
• 798

Admittedly, I have not been around all that much for a fellow in his late 50s. My travels have been interesting but comparatively few. I’m fine with that.

Folks who are enamored of travels far and wide sometimes have a hard time believing a guy like me — one who seeks adventure of one type or another every single day — can be content exploring such a small chunk of the world’s geography. In my own defense, I make the argument that if I lived in a place where there was no change of the seasons; no annual progression from cold, dark and silent to warm, sunny and bursting with life; no joyous annual reward for having toughed it out through the lean and hungry times, I might think differently.

Now begins the time of great reward. With the sun up earlier and down later every day, the world has awakened. And even though the predawn frost still bullies the world into holding its breath, by late morning the sun has warmed all but the deepest hollows and the din resumes apace.

In Ohio, summertime writes a script of endless possibility. Fall paints from a pallet of fire and light. Winter speaks a silent magic all its own. But springtime? Here in our part of the Buckeye State, the world bursts forth in song, and no member of the earthly choir sings a more anticipated song than one of the tiniest, most unassuming creatures of the nearby wild: the spring peeper.

Beginning with the first signs of thaw in late February, I spend a portion of every day wishing, hoping and praying the diminutive amphibian will make itself known as I pass by on my evening ride home.

This has been a lifelong pursuit. When I was a kid, I’d pedal down to the “swamp hole” behind the old Osteopathic Hospital at the foot of the town’s “officially unofficial” sledding hill just to listen for the high trill of a thousand tiny frogs declaring the world had actually survived another winter and that spring was finally here.

I don’t recall ever actually seeing a spring peeper back then, and frankly, for all I knew they were as nebulous as Sasquatch or the fabled “snipe” of many a futile summer camp hunt — but I knew for sure there was a sound of spring. No matter what made it, I was on board with believing it at its word.

Throughout my life I’ve made an annual mission of reporting the first peepers to those in my circle. As one who has always spent a considerable amount of time mucking around the wetlands, woodlands and other such places at the end of gravel roads, friends and family look to me for their “peeper report.” I’m not so sure any of them have had much of an idea what the critters looked like either, but that was of little consequence. Everyone knew what they sounded like and more importantly what that sound meant.

Last week, as the mercury crept into the 60s, a close encounter with a “member of the choir” on the trail offered a rare opportunity for a full-body photo shoot of a spring peeper as he made his way across the pavement to join the “pool party” on the other side. The half-dollar-sized brown to gray to green tree frog is easily identified by a dark X on its back and rounded “suction cup-like” discs at the end of the toes — a distinct trait among tree frogs.

Peepers favor vernal pools where, in the still water, they’ll lay their soft, transparent eggs that hatch into tadpoles two days to two weeks after fertilization. Adult peepers spend the balance of the warm season upland feeding on bugs, beetles and spiders and other small organisms until finally burying themselves in the forest duff, under logs or tucking themselves inside a fold of tree bark for hibernation, only to emerge once again near the end of winter to usher in the spring with song.

Remember, if you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com.