Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Signal-to-noise ratio, a measure used in science and engineering to quantify how much a signal has been corrupted by noise  -from Wikipedia 

 

 When the frogs start singing, it's usually the chorus frogs, calling to one another from midway up the trees in our woods. They can be loud enough to be heard quite a long ways away. I have yet to actually see a chorus frog up close.

frogs in the pond

 

The leopard frogs and the green frogs in the pond however are anything but shy. They start their racket a little later into the season. Typically, once the weather has produced a few warm sunny days, they are more inclined to start their cacophony. A few days of rain seem to get them going too. 

frogs in the pond

 

When the pond frogs start singing, they dont stop. They go all night some nights. They are so much louder. They can be clearly heard indoors. Luckily it only lasts a week or so. Once it quiets down, and the territorial disputes have been settled, mates chosen, etc... then the frogs go about the business of making lots of new little tadpoles. 

video of the frogs in the pond

tiny toad in the wood chips

 

Last year, when the tadpoles hatched, I realized that different frogs made different sorts of tadpoles. I don't know why that had never occurred to me before. Between the different frogs, and the American toads, all using the pond, it became a steady stream of tadpoles and then little baby frogs and toadlets all the way from June into July. As a result, the lawn was filled with frogs and toads. In order to avoid a massacre, I held off mowing the lawn until mid-July. At that point, the grass was mid-calf and I was starting to worry about ticks and Lyme disease. 

frogs in the pond

 

Mowing is one of my least favorite chores. I put it up there with cleaning the bathroom. Because of the frogs and toads in the lawn, I had to be so much more careful. First I would walk through the whole yard... shuffling my feet to encourage them to get moving. Then I would drive the riding mower around with the blade turned off. The noise of the mower usually got most of the frogs to hop out of the grass and into the flowerbeds or into the pond. The toads usually dug under the wood chips and made themselves scarce. 

 

toads in the grass, everywhere

Afterwards, when the grass settled and the noise of the mower was silenced, there was a stillness to the early evening. It only lasted about half an hour... sometimes less. Then one of the bigger frogs in the pond would start bellowing and asserting dominance.  As other frogs jumped into the noise, the birds would kick in too. It never takes long before the birds and amphibians resume filling the air with their melodious cacophony. Inevitably, it always sounds so much better than the lawnmower.