This is a gravid female bronze frog at the edge of out pool.
Plunk, plunk, plunk. Hmmmm. Where’d they come from?

The calls were obviously those of bronze frogs, Rana c. clamitans, the southern and nominate form of the more northerly green frog. Bronze or green, the calls are the same—plunks best likened to the sound made while tuning a loose banjo string. And these calls were coming from what I felt was an unlikely place…

During our many year drought, when no ephemeral pools contained water, Patti and I decided that the southern toads in our yard needed a breeding puddle. So we bought a 20 foot square of pliable PVC, dug a slope-sided excavation about 15” deep in the center, laid in the liner, filled it with water from the hose, and sprinkled dirt over all of the liner that remained exposed. IOW, our intended toad pool was simple in the extreme. We threw in a few aquarium plants, sat back and waited to see if the toads would accept the new water filled hole.

They did. First in small numbers but then from the chorus it seemed that all in the yard converged there—and within weeks we had hundreds of toadlets. Then a few green treefrogs found the pool. Next came southern leopard frogs, dragonflies, and all manner of aquatic insects. And then for years nothing new seemed to find the pool—until a couple of months ago when those plunking notes told me we had new arrivals.

I was glad they were there but wondered then and still do, where these bronze frogs, a species pretty firmly tied to vegetated pond and swamp edges, had migrated from. The frogs stayed and vocalized for several weeks and then, seemingly overnight, en masse, they all disappeared.

Now I’m wondering “Where’d they go?” Did they choose a rainy night to migrate elsewhere? Was our puddle visited by an efficient raccoon? Will the bronze frogs return? Time may tell. Maybe.