The Cliff Chirping Frog is a small terrestrial frog of the rocky canyons and hillsides of Central Texas. It ranges across Edward's Plateau into the eastern Trans-pecos.
They are variable in color. Frogs from the eastern part of the range are darker than those from the western part generally, although there is a strong correlation between the color of the frog and the rocks they occupy. The frog above is from the western parts of the range in Crockett County while this frog below came from Hays County in the eastern part of the range.
The call of the Cliff Chirping Frog (as the name implies) is a series of single chirps or short trills of chirps. They are often mistaken for birds chirping at night. They tend to call from low on bushes or holes and cracks in rocky bluffs so that can be very hard to find when calling.
Here is a series of calls recorded near Leakey, Texas. The call starts off with a sharp chirps and eventually leads into the trilled chirp series. Here is a series of chirps
and the spectrogram for that call series.
Here are the chirp notes followed by three trilling notes.
The spectrogram for this call series looks like this.
Well thanks, its a dead ringer for what I have heard calling outside our bedroom window on many occasions. I thought it might be toad since it was far from water. Just found your website congrats on good work. C. Laird, Kerrville
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