I have an comfortable response to that question up there : No . This fourth dimension of year , tree frog are manifestly all around . At dusk , they get down theirglorious symphony of cheep , uprise louder if there ’s a pelting shower and growing quieter if a human or other animal passes by . I bonk cracking the windows at night and allow their sweet lullaby tranquillize me to sleep . But as intemperately as I ’ve attempt to spot a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree frog , it has yet to occur .
Kentucky plays host to several different character of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree frogs . The one that ’s likely in our domain — though , I ’ll never bang for sure until I can actually blot one — is the Cope ’s Gray Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree salientian ( Hyla chrysoscelis ) . Its vocalization , described by the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Service as a “ cheap , harsh , rapidly blurted trill , ” is by all odds one I ’ve heard during our time on the farm — though , I would n’t say it ’s as displeasing to the pinna as the description indicate . However , it ’s not quite the melodic line we ’ve been embellish with this meter of year , which is more cognate to a cricket ’s call .
We ’ve been told byneighborsthat what we ’re hearing is indeed tree diagram frogs , not cricket , and I conceive it . The sound is more pleasant and blends more nicely into the environment than a cricket ’s noise . I just wish I could tune my ear into what species is exactly making the phone .
We have two old kine ponds and a lagoon which likely help as home to our nighttime noisemakers . It ’s about this fourth dimension of twelvemonth that the Cope ’s Gray tree frog will begin its mating ritual , repose its eggs through mid - August anywhere they can see pee . This clock time of yr , with all the rain we ’ve endured , it seems they wo n’t have to bet too far to find a desirable creek or ditch if the pond do n’t serve . The rest of the class , they spend their clip high in the trees — and we have plenty to divvy up with them .
A unearthly and wonderful fact about the Cope ’s Gray — and I have sex all the weird and wonderful things we ’re learning about our land — is that itfreezes during wintertime , but it does n’t die . The glycerol , a viscous liquidity , that circulates through the Gaul ’s body turns to glucose in the winter , serving as an antifreeze to protect the batrachian ’s jail cell from shutting down when the weather turns cold-blooded . The ease of the toad frog ’s body then stop dead , essentially turning it into a anuran Popsicle , until the give melt arrives . I ’ve never spotted a frozen froggie on my winter walks , but you intimately believe that next year , I ’ll be on the lookout .
