1 April finds us in a Wood Frog breeding pond which Fred calls “Site F” along Forsyth Road in Limerick Forest, Grenville County, Ontario. I pushed through willow bushes and past dry spruce boughs which caught at my sweater, stepping on mossy logs in the shallow pond edge, until I paused at one of the last two remnants of melting ice. The frogs quietened as I came out into the open, but resumed their chorus gradually as I stood still and got out my paints.
Most of them are calling from the dead cattails on the north side. Individually each Wood Frog call sounds like “duck, duck, duck” but as I made my preliminary pencil sketch, all together they sounded jubilant – a clamour like children in a playground. Later I noticed chuckling, and still later it seemed to me to have changed to laughing.
I painted the patch of ice first, but when it was time to leave I noticed that it had further melted to half the size! Fred took the water temperature over near the chorus and it was 14C, the same as the air. No breeze, but very few mosquitoes. Wood Frog tadpoles eat a lot of mosquito larvae.
