Are there really coquis in Florida? The longer I search for these little frogs, the more certain I become that they are temporary visitors at best, and that nowhere in the United States are they resident.



There is no question that a few occasionally are found in plant nurseries in southernmost Florida and a few were once found and heard in southeastern Louisiana. But it now seems a surety that these few have either been stowaways on plant shipments from Puerto Rico, the coqui's home island, or deliberate releases. Unless within a heated greenhouse, the little brownish frogs with a lighter triangle between the eyes, apparently succumb as soon as seasonally cooler weather set in.

Over the many years I have searched for them, I have found only 3 coquis, all males, in Miami-Dade County, Florida. One discovered in our tropical garden in Ft. Myers was also a calling male. This lone example made its first appearance in mid-summer a day or so after I had returned from a Florida City nursery with a car full of heliconias.

He was seen no more after our first cold snap when the temperature dropped into the low 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The favored calling site of this frog, from which it called almost nightly, was at an elevation of 3 to 7 feet on the smooth bark of a huge orange tree.

The call of the coqui is unmistakable. It is an oft-repeated, loud, whistled "co-kee," with the accent on the second syllable. Heard once it will not be forgotten.