Circle M Farm

Once spring lets loose here on the farm, it’s easy to get swept up in the the ferocious current and forget to savor moments here and there among the many wonders taking place. One of the easiest to miss, because of its so-subtle onset, is the return of the peepers.

Our spring peepers started singing this past Sunday, a song at first so quiet and so woven into the fabric of my outdoor memory that I barely noticed the change. I think I was walking from garage to barn to check the lambs at twilight. Something familiar had crept into my consciousness, but I didn’t perceive what it was at first. I stood in the driveway, staring at the sunset reflected in the temporary lake the rains and melting snow have made of the cornfield just west of us. Suddenly I gasped and shouted to nobody: “The spring peepers are back!” Their literal return to life signals a welcome end to the especially grueling winter we’ve just endured.

Northern spring peeper, singing his little heart out for a girl!

Northern spring peepers are diminutive tree frogs, measuring just .5 to 1.5 inches across, that live in forests and brushy areas until right about now when they make their way out of hibernation under leaves and bark to one of the ubiquitous temporary and permanent ponds that dot our rolling landscape. Having reached a place appropriate for mating, which involves females laying and males fertilizing millions of jellied eggs deposited under the surface of water, they raise a ruckus of shrill singing to find each other. Though they start off subdued and sporadic, probably because many are still making a long pilgrimage to the raucous swamps, within weeks the song will rise to a sustained pitch and volume that will make it difficult for us to talk near the slough and pond, especially at night.

They are the first frogs to break the long winter’s silence here in Wisconsin, and many people describe their song like sleigh bells. I don’t hear bells – I hear creaky gates being frantically opened and shut. Or hundreds of ratchets being spun in the air. Or elves screaming. When we first moved here, I didn’t know if I was hearing birds or bugs or frogs when the singing started in March. Right now, though, I just hear the sound of life. The sound of spring really sprung. The tiny tough creatures actually freeze in cold weather, but their cells don’t burst, due to some concentrated sugars that act as natural anti-freeze. They experience regular resurrection every year and are harbingers of the multiple miracles the thaw will bring. Oddly enough, the northern spring peeper’s scientific name is Pseudacris crucifer, for the irregularly-shaped X or cross the frog carries on its back.

By mid-summer, the peepers’ joyous songs will have succumbed to the heat, and the frogs will have receded to their forest homes as invisibly as they came to their spring ponds. I’ve only ever seen one, a lovely bright green half-inch imp with little round pads on his tiny toes. He jumped out of one of my cold frames and clung to my hand for a magical moment before disappearing down a pipe supporting some shelves holding seedling trays on my back porch.