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Spring Peeper — Part 4
As soon as the front legs break through their coverings, the creatures are eager to leave the water. They may be found some distance from the water while the tail is still long. They are certain to climb the grasess and sedges and to sit on floating leaves and twigs before the metamorphosis is completed.
In June they may be found in hundreds among the brown leaves and green moss of the bank. They are little, dark-coloured, leaping objects, which from their small size we might mistake for young toads, if we did not examine them closely. They have not yet gone very far from their pond or marsh, but their diligent search for gnats, mosquitoes, and ants has already begun.
When we stand on the sphagnum border of the marsh and look into the water, we see so many enemies of these tadpoles, that the wisdom of their early escape to land life appeals to us. There are water-beetles and bugs, leeches, diving-spiders, and the larvae of dragon-flies and caddis-flies. There are always newts to devour them. There are Leopard frogs perhaps, and certainly Green frogs, that eat the adult Pickerings as well as the tadpoles.
Very often the marsh or pool dries up before the development is completed. The water recedes, to leave a small pool measured only in feet, and perhaps only in inches, where enemies and tadpoles are crowded together (It is said by M. H. Hinckley that birds, such as the crow, the heron, and the woodcock, take advantage of such conditions, and make feeding-places of these reduced pools, as is proved by the tracks and borings in the mud adjacent.) If the evaporation proceeds too rapidly, all the tadpoles may perish and leave only blackened stains on the mud to show where they have been; but if it is more slow, or comes but a short time previous to their final change, this change may be hastened by the conditions and the young Pickerings will leave the water earlier--and smaller--than is their wont (This characteristic of adaptability, possessed by all of the Bactrachia, is more pronounced among the Salamanders where the larval stage may be greatly shortened, or prolonged for months or years.)
Pickering's Tree Frogs are likely to be silent and in hiding during July, but from the close of July until December they may be found not only in the woods, but in all sorts of unexpected places. Their main interest in life lies in hunting small insects. The chase may take them to the trees of the orchard, to the low growths of the vegetable garden, or to the shrubs and vines of the flower-garden. They have been found even in green-houses, apparently attracted there by the moisture and food supply.
We may find them on tree trunks, in the tops of alder and huckleberry, or on tall ferns. But the greater number of them remain on the ground, in the woods or about the marsh. Like the young Wood Frogs, they hide and leap and hunt among the trailing dewberry, the wintergreen, and the partridge-berry.
We may hear them and find them in November even, when the sun shines down between the bare trees to the yellow and red leaves, the patches of russet fern, and the clusters of jack-in-the-pulpit's red berries on the ground. All remind us of the approach of winter. We know that to-morrow, if not to-day, the cold wind will blow and the snow will fall. But to-day the sun is bright on the witch-hazel's yellow flowers, and there is good courage in the shrill piping voice of this little Hyla.
Pickering's Hyla sleeps during December and January, nestled under moss and leaves, but wakes in icy February to herald the spring with the same shrill piping voice of good cheer that we heard in the November woods.