Spring Peepers….. One of Nature’s Most Musical Creatures! I love the first sounds and signs of the spring season. The birds chirping as they migrate back to our region, the flowers that start to bud in the warm sun, and the trees that begin to start to green up. But, I think most of all I would have to say I love the Spring Peepers most. I have a pond right beside my house and as the weather begins to warm with the spring I open my windows and I can hear the peepers singing their most glorious song, and that tells me that spring has woken up from its long winters slumber. It is a time of twitterpation. Spring peepers are among the first of the season to start calling and breeding. Some think these frogs are loud and annoying, and to some they might be. However, the call of the peeper frog is very important to the mating process. This sound is what helps the female find their perfect, handsome, little frog prince. The faster and louder they call, the more of a chance they will have finding a pretty, little, female, peeper frog mistress to mate with. These tiny, little, love bugs only breed from February to June. The females will lay anywhere between 200 and 1,200 eggs. But, as one would think, not in one bunch. They lay each one separately and stick them to the vegetation around the shallow edges of ponds. I, for one, could not imagine laying that many eggs. Once these little tiny eggs hatch, they will soon turn into tadpoles breathing through gills and swimming with tails. This is usually by the end of July. The tails will eventually fall off as they mature and reach adulthood. This will happen when they are around eight weeks old. This is the time they will leave the pond for the forest floors. However, by the end of summer they will reach full adulthood, and be the size of only 1 to 1 ½ inches. As the days begin to cool and the nights start to turn cold, these little amphibians will burrow themselves into the mud around the ponds edge, and settle themselves in for a long winters nap. They do not freeze because their bodies produce a sugar substance that protects them. This keeps their cells from bursting, acting almost as if it were anti-freeze. Finally, once again in the spring, this cycle will start all over again. This, my friend, is the circle of life for the Spring Peepers! By: Carrie Nicholas
