I heard a substantial wood frog chorus yesterday in the Blue Hills at a
large, likely semi-permanent vernal pool in the notch between Great Blue and
Wolcott Hills, just south of the Skyline Trail. There were at least sevearl
dozen males calling at about 2pm - from past experience I'm certain that
there were at least hundreds of wood frogs in the pool at the time.
I also saw my first snake out in the same area, again an eastern garter.
Interesting about that - Robert Shoop opined a while ago that perhaps
spotted salamanders and wood frogs evolved to breed so early in these parts
in part to escape snake predation. In my experience, however, they do not
escape such predation. I have consistently found garter snakes active
during the period of maximal Ambystoma and wood frog breeding. At one site
in Westford some years ago, colleagues and I caught about 80 individual
garter and ribbon snakes in a drift fence system while simultaneously
catching wood frogs, spotted and blue spotted salamanders i their breeding
migrations.
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