A Little Night Music

At first, I thought I was channeling summer in Iowa, where I grew up. Every night this week as the wind died down, the quiet was filled with the sounds of ... chirping frogs? My neighbor heard them, too. "Did you hear... frogs the other night?" he asked hesitantly. But we live in Colorado, at 8,600 feet, in the midst of a ponderosa pine forest with very little grass. There are no ponds or streams or lakes in our neighborhood and when it rains, the water disappears into the gravelly ground. Our nights are quiet, without the calls of locusts or crickets or the constant hum of bat wings I would hear in Iowa. So surely there aren't any amphibians here, right?
Wrong. My friends at the Colorado Division of Wildlife tell me the night music is coming from toads - perhaps Red Spotted Toads. Every night, they serenade us from their hiding places in tall grasses and under rocks.
We've lived here for more than 20 years, and we noticed the chirping for the first time last summer. A DOW biologist said he wasn't sure why the toads have relocated to our mountain town, but there's undoubtedly a reason. According to Frogwatch USA, frogs and toads have more significance than just their musical ability. They are important indicators of changes in the environment.
I hope they stick around, because I've gotten used to their night music and will miss it if it stops. The sounds of nature are renewing as well as environmentally significant. When we first moved to Colorado in the 1980s, we spent a lot of time exploring Rocky Mountain National Park. Cub Lake was a favorite destination. Cold and clear and covered with lily pads, it was also frog central. We could hear the frogs from the trail before we could even see the alpine lake. Their hypnotic sound made us linger. But one summer, they were gone. Cub Lake was just as beautiful as ever, but silent. Biologists believe pesticides or parasites might be to blame for amphibians disappearing at Rocky Mountain National Park and other locations around the world. For now, the toads that serenade me are secure in their mountain retreat. I hope they stay that way.