An Encounter with a Western Chorus Frog (Pseudacris triseriata)

Western Chorus Frog (_Pseudacris triseriata_)

Last week (August 31, 2022) I was up in the San Juan Mountains at about 10,500 feet, scouting for mushrooms in the Spruce-Fir forest. I was walking through a wet meadow when I saw a tiny creature hopping near my feet.

Since I don’t have the greatest vision these days, I assumed that it was a nymphal Grasshopper - that’s how tiny it was. When I knelt down to look more closely, I saw that it was a little Frog, perhaps 1.5 cm long.

It was a Western Chorus Frog - Pseudacris triseriata.

Here’s a view of the little fellow in my hand, to give a better idea of how diminutive he was.

Western Chorus Frog (_Pseudacris triseriata_) in hand

This was just spectacularly cool, finding this little fellow up here.

We used to have a lot of these little guys around our house. We live about 4000’ lower in elevation, in an agricultural area of hayfields and fragments of Pinyon-Juniper woodland. But it’s the same species of Frog.

Five years or so ago, we’d hear lots of them calling when we were out on the back porch. The last few years, though,we’ve big changes in our neighborhood. Some of our neighbors have filled in their stock ponds and bladed their land into hay fields. There is far less standing water nearby.

We’ve also seen a lot more Bullfrogs in and around the creek at the base of our hill. And Bullfrogs love to eat other Frogs.

Either of those things - fewer ponds, more Bullfrogs - would be sufficient to cause our local Chorus Frog population to decline. And that’s without considering the 20 year drought the Southwest is going through.

So it was a real treat to go up into the Forest and find this little Frog.

Addendum:

Here’s a video from this Spring of a pond up on the Forest. You can hear a few Chorus Frogs calling.

A pond up on the San Juan National Forest. You can’t actually _see_ the Chorus Frogs in this video, but you can hear them calling.

I’ve heard the sound described as similar to somebody dragging their thumbnail across the tines of a comb. Good description!

Sources:

Hammerson, Geoffrey A. 1999 Amphibians and Reptiles in Colorado - A Colorado Field Guide. University Press of Colorado; 2nd edition. ISBN ‎ 0870815342.