EDIT - I am now officially even more confused about these two species. I think this one maybe E. coqui and my photos of "E. coqui" in that species blog post may be E. portoricensis. Looks like I need to make another trip to Puerto Rico!
I thought this frog is the Upland Coqui (Eleutherodactylus portoricensis) It is very similar to the Coqui (Eleutherodactylus coqui). Both species occur in the area I photographed and recorded this frog. Their calls are also rather similar. The two species are similar enough that for many years they were both regarded as the same species of frog. The Upland Coqui has a higher pitched call which is most easily heard in the "qui" note of the call. (See my note from 2023 below explaining that difference further - it isn't the pitch difference that is as important as the interval difference).
This is from the lowlands between the El Yunque Rainforest and the town of Naguabo. It had rained very heavily that afternoon and thousands of frogs were calling along the Rio Blanco river floodplain and forest edge. Although this frog was not recorded in the highlands, I still believe it to be Eleutherodactylus portoricensis. (If anyone knows any different, please leave a comment!)
This is the recording from the frog picture above calling near El Yunque.
2023 update - I've been listening to these recordings again (and again). I think this is E. coqui instead. In doing a bunch of comparisons online, I think the difference between the two is the distance between the frequencies of their calls. E. portoricensis has the two parts of the call closer in pitch, E. coqui further. From the playing around I have done, it appears:
E. portoricensis only goes up ~8 semitones between the co and the -qui (an Augmented 5th for those musically inclined).
E. coqui goes up ~10 semitones between the two parts (a minor 7th - almost an octave). I have created a silly comparison using generated tones that I will upload in the future.
© Chris Harrison 2013
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