Goose Pond Mountain Created Wetlands, 02 April 2008

We've started hearing the Spring Peepers and Wood Frogs, so we decided we had to bring our families to listen; little did we know that we'd also be seeing the frogs today! Eight famillies (and roughly 13 pairs of mittens) joined us on this sunny but chilly day. At the first pond we netted a mating pair of Spring Peepers, still in amplexus. Most of the people on today's outing had never seen a Spring Peeper, much less a mating pair! After brief looks and a few photographs of these usually elusive amphibians we let them go and headed along the boardwalk to the other two ponds. One of our pond net masters scooped up two Bullfrog tadpoles. The kids crowded around to peek at them in the little container we bring along for better viewing of our catches. Parents talked about the size of tadpoles of different species and the length of time they take to metamorphose into their adult form. While the children might not have provided their full attention to this discussion, they were no doubt absorbing it passively. As we continued our walk around the circle we paused at the Buttonbush swamp, listening to the duck-like quacking of the Wood Frogs. We were watching several splash around in the water of the swamp when another pond net master behind us yelled for our attention. He had spotted a Wood Frog in the leaf litter and scopped it up, bringing it over to us so we could all get a look. Again, almost none of our companions had ever seen a Wood Frog. We talked about the "superhero" mask of the frog, pointing it out to our children and giggling as we made up stories about masked Wood Frogs hopping around and fighting evil. We placed the frog back in the leaf littler and headed back to our cars, listening to the frog cacophany of spring.