McLean - Forget the Cicadas - Watch out for the Frogs

When it comes to frogs McLean may be in for it.  The Gray Tree Frogs (Hyla versicolor) have become quite common in McLean during the summers.  Last summer for the first time ever we had about a dozen that sat around our pool every night.  They are small (a few inches across and long) but sing out with a croak that is sharp, deep and loud for such a small animal. 

When you hear their croak you know it is coming from a male as he sits there announcing his territory.   Even more fun is to watch them ballooning
their small throats or see their big eyes or the tiny pads on their feet in
place of toenails. 

Is this cool?  Well sort of, if you like frogs. 

Better yet, sitting at night with drinks, friends and steel band music in the background when the frogs start up, well, it’s almost like being in Jamaica back country or a Costa Rican rain forest at night. 

In National Geographic you’ll see many photos of their bizarre poisonous cousins from the Amazon – usually brilliantly colored, so you know Mother Nature is telling you something. 

Here in McLean our local grays are nothing but friendly, non-toxic type.  All of ours are gray, much like the bark of the local trees (oaks, tulip trees and dogwoods), but they can camouflage themselves by slowly changing color from gray to green depending on the substrate, and they can go all the way from black to white.   Luckily our pool deck is cream-colored, otherwise we might have stepped on a few before we began looking closely.  

Are they useful?  In some places in the tropics tree frogs are kept in small cages as “barometers” because they start croaking when rain is on its way.

The frogs sitting around our pool at night are waiting for females who enter their territory when ready.  The male then clasps onto her back and they dive into the water together where the female releases her eggs as the male fertilizes them. The females seldom croak, but when they do it’s a small one, meaning she has finished laying eggs, and a sign to the male to get off.  The eggs are small, covered in jelly and stick to anything floating or stationary.  They hatch into tadpoles within 6 days.