Fwd: night sound in trees? - 8:30 pm, Austin

[Mike Quinn]

Can anyone help Pat out? Thanks, Mike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Patricia Q. Richardson <pa...@biosci.utexas.edu>
Date: Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 3:06 PM
Subject: night sound in trees?
To: ento...@gmail.com


Hi Mike,

I am quite mystified by a soft sweet musical sound as Dick and I walk home through Hyde Park at night (like 8:30pm). Comes from numerous trees, but only one or two from same tree, high up, soft high slow tweep tweep, maybe tweep tweep tweep. We might walk through two blocks and hear this in 10 different trees, as though answering each other. Really doesn't sound like an insect. Really sounds like a bird(s). But wouldn't they just be making themselves available to owls with such sound behavior? It adds a gentle delicate simple song to our walk home. I've heard it on multiple nights over the last month at least, always when dark.
Any ideas?

Thanks, Pat

--
Patricia Q. Richardson, Ph.D.
Univ. of Texas, Integrative Biology
1 University Station C0930
Austin TX 78712
512-471-4128

[Roger Sanderson]

Not actually hearing the sound, I of course can only guess.  But when we first moved to our north Dallas neighborhood, I kept hearing a “chirping” sound in the trees.  I wandered all over (it’s a wonder I wasn’t shot!) with a flashlight trying to get a glimpse.  Finally, during a rainstorm, I heard it coming from my own patio!  I caught it, a small frog, and tried to identify it.  I was at a Texas Herp Society symposium soon thereafter and mentioned to Dr. Dixon that I had found what I thought was a Rio Grande Chirping Frog in my residential neighborhood in Dallas.  He said that there were established populations in Dallas as well as many other areas of the state.  They surmised that they had been hitching rides on nursery stock from the Valley.  Since then I frequently discover them under boards or debris in my yard.  I assume they climb up into the trees at night during wet or at least humid weather.  From the description I would bet that is what Patricia heard!  Roger

P.S. I mentioned to the TP&W person that was selling tapes and CDs of frog calls for the Texas Frog Watch program that how pleased I was to buy one so I could let others hear what the Rio Grande Chirping Frog sounds like, and she said that unfortunately they were not able to get that species on the tape!  I’m not sure if they rectified that problem since or not.    

 

Roger Sanderson

Director of Botanic Gardens & Wildlife Biologist

Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary

1 Nature Place

McKinney, Texas 75069

972-562-5566 ext.273

972-548-9119 FAX

rsand...@heardmuseum.org

Teaching about nature, like fishing and birdwatching, is an eternal series of occasions for hope! 

---

[Chuck Davis]

This sounds like a Rio Grande Chirping Frog. I began hearing them 7 or 8 years ago in La Porte (SE of Houston) before I learned what they were. They expanded from the Rio Grande valley in cultivated potted plants. I've included an attachment from Guides to Frogs and Toads of Texas (from TPWD)

Chuck Davis
La Porte, TX

[Brush Freeman]

While the mystery sound likely does not come from this animal , I thought I would mention Geckos...In Port O'Connor there are two kinds (?) and one of those is quite vocal...It was forever a mystery to me as to what those small chirps were, but one night I was hearing almost a dozen of these things and heard one culprit calling from a beneath ceramic fish on an outside wall in a covered patio....I grabbed a flashlight and deftly and quickly removed the fish and there was a gecko maybe 3-4 " inches long...It was the only animal under there and it ran off to another crevice.  That particular night they were quite vocal and surprisingly loud and could be heard a good 40-50' away.  They only call at certain times it seems and the call is heard very commonly coming from the tops of palms....Usually there are tree frogs everywhere as well but this year with this drought I have not heard so many as I usually do.

 

Brush Freeman

bru...@earthlink.net

 

[Cat Burst]

Thank you so much for posting the Rio Grande Chirping Frog soundtrack. I have lived in Houston for over 20 years and always wondered what wonderful creature was such as eloquent night-time communicator. The soprano voices of the frogs are complemented by the bullfrogs after a rainy day, and it is a delight to listen to them once the temperature cools off and the mosquitoes get sleepy. They create a chorus that is almost as melodious as the birds at dawn. 

Isn't our planet a great place to live?

[J Clayton]

I heard this sound when I lived in Houston.  Not Rio Grande Chirping Frog. Just listened to audio of that.  Not the same. 

it is two short chirps then a pause and  1 chirp then 3 more chirps, this time lower.