Spotted Chorus FrogPseudacris clarkii

Spotted Chorus Frog (Pseudacris clarkii)
Burleson County, Texas

The Spotted Chorus Frog is quite and attractive little light gray/white frog with green spots.  The intensity of their color appears to change depending on weather and time of day.  Sometimes an individual will seem quite drab brown with brownish-green spots whereas other times of day the background color lightens up producing a very attractive white and green frog.

Spotted Chorus Frogs call from flooded grassy fields and ditches in Spring and into early Summer. They can be difficult to find as they call due to their small size and the fact that they call from within grassy areas with just their heads out of the water.

Here is a typical spot to find a Spotted Chorus Frog calling.  There was one in the middle of this clump of grass in a flooded roadside ditch.

Here he is from a little closer.  They can be very hard to spot.  Often, the only thing that gives them away is the movement of their vocal sac as they call.

Here's another calling individual from Schleicher County, Texas.  Even in the open they can be tough to spot unless you see the movement of their vocal sac.

Their call is similar to some other Pseudacris species in that it sounds like someone scraping their fingernails over a plastic comb.  Spotted Chorus Frogs calls are faster than some other "comb scraping" species.

This individual was calling from a flooded roadside area in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in July, 2010.

Here is the spectrogram for three of those calls.  You can see that each call is a fast series of "clicks" with an slight increase in pitch towards the end.

Here's a short video of one calling from a roadside ditch in Atascosa County, Texas.  You can hear him alternating his calls with another male calling from the opposite side of the road.

 

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© Chris Harrison 2012 & 2020