Amidst the plethora of spring, the peeps of the peepers is a force best applied when some self-appointed know-it-all tries to explain what spring is all about. Turn up the volume. Let the truth peep out. Authentic and Transcendent, a religion entire. But what recourse do you have when that know-it-all writes? Let the image of the peeper, an X on every little frog back, blur all words.
That's a small frog, none smaller, adhering to the edge of a 2 gallon empty kitty litter container next to my cistern pump. That photo was taken on August 4, 2010, when everything was hot. This blog is about a chilly April when most everything else was cold but the peepers congregating around vernal pools, small ponds, and other damp places and peeping hours on end, during the day at first and then into and through the night. Here are snatches of the peepers taken as night fell on April 15. This year some wood frogs joined the chorus but as night falls the peepers high C over them.
But these tiny uptempo frogs never seem to find the beat. There is as much a pattern of avoidance as there is of concordance. Or so it sounds to my ears. The point seems to be to create an attractive mass of sound (only the males are peeping) and at the same time give each peeper its own space.
Usually the exuberance of animal mating rituals are ascribed to males of the species competing for the favors of the females. In the case of peepers I think groups of males are competing with other groups around other pools. On our 52 acres of woods and fields, there are more or less 7 pools around which peepers peep. The peeper spends most of its life in the woods. It's called a tree frog after all, though whenever I've seen one it's hopping on the leaves and litter like the peeper below that I saw on October 17, 2007.
The pools where the peepers will leave their eggs are more out in the open. The female and other males find strength in numbers and can't be quiet about it because they want to attract more peepers.
This spring I more or less spent my limited peeper time, about a dozen evenings in April and May thinking about why peeper males come together only to stay apart; thinking until, fortunately, I was rendered thoughtless by the peeps.
Oddly enough I got a lesson in swarming from a surprising source, snow fleas. They were dotting the snow just a month ago, a sight so familiar I no longer take photos much less study the hops of the insect also called the springtail. Here is a photo of them in the snow on February 25, 2008
I once saw a small ball of them in the snow on January 26, 2001.
Then this April in the midst of peeper season, as Leslie walked by the area where we had boiled maple sap in March, she thought she saw soot on the rocks. She tried to wipe it off with her feet and saw that all that soot was alive.
These were not the only small things swarming. Along the St. Lawrence River the midges begin emerging in April and if there is enough heat and not much wind they can begin swarming over the trees in the evening. I didn't notice that happening this windy April, but one warmer afternoon my legs looked to be walking through smoke, actually three small swarms of the tiniest midge-like flying insects I've ever seen.
Small things swarm. A great way to remind themselves that they are here and en mass a considerable force of nature and that there is one way to keep that going. The peepers are small too but much bigger than insects and much louder. A swarm of midges can make a hum above the trees. The springtail swarm we saw was silent. Of course, my argument is that the peepers use their voice to maintain their distance and by varying their beat five a grander impression of the given group of male peepers. Towards the end of peeper season in early May, peepers seem less shy about my wandering around them. A roving raccoon can bring instant silence around a peeper pool, and generally my walking around creates a moving pocket of silence though most of the chorus keeps going.
One night I sat in my chair and a peeper behind me kept going. In the dark video below, with its unsophisticated audio, I tried to present the general chorus and then I got as close as I could to the peeper behind me.
Doesn't it sound like that peeper is trying to find it own space in a sphere of similar sound? Or just lean back buoyed up by the sounds and if you are lucky instead of the usual stars you will see an X in the sky.
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