Nature at its Best: A ‘Blood Moon’, Chirping Frogs, Maybe a Hooting Owl or Two, or a Howling Coyote. We Have it all on Our Lil’ Island

Isn’t nature grand? Two amazing recent episodes – last night’s lunar eclipse and the onset of chirping frogs in our ponds and waterways – makes us appreciate that there is more to life than what just happened on our latest news feed, or what is streaming on Facebook or Instagram.

While somewhat obscured by clouds, the eclipse was nonetheless fascinating to watch. We observed the Earth’s shadow slowly creeping over the moon’s surface from our backyard, as some clouds gathered and a few raindrops fell.

Around 11:30 p.m. last night, the moon appeared to be completely absorbed by the Earth’s shadow and our old friend in the night sky began to turn a rusty, orange color – the famous “Blood Moon” – right before our eyes. It was a brief interlude, as clouds quickly swept in, but it was a testament to nature’s uncanny ability to awe us.

What causes the Blood Moon to form? According to NASA, via the news site Axios, the Moon appears red or orange during the lunar eclipse because “any sunlight that’s not blocked by our planet is filtered through a thick slice of Earth’s atmosphere,” NASA said.

“It’s as if all the world’s sunrises and sunsets are projected onto the Moon,” NASA continued. If you didn’t stay up for the highlights, the moon appeared coppery red during the lunar eclipse’s totality phase for a little less than an hour, according to our observations and NASA’s timeline. The next total lunar eclipse in North America will happen in about a year’s time.

Meanwhile, the recent cold, gray and wet weather notwithstanding, spring has sprung on Bainbridge Island and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Early growing flowers like daffodils are blooming, birds are returning to nest, squirrels are coming out of hibernation, yard grass is growing long and thick, and the familiar sound of chirping frogs can be heard throughout the day, and especially into the evening. (Not to mention the occasional hooting owl, and the ubiquitous sounds of howling coyotes).

What’s charming this time of year is the melodious chorus of so-called “Tree Frogs,”  a sound that always reminds me of Mark Twain and one of his many wondrous tomes from yesteryear, such as Tom Sawyer, or the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I can picture Tom and Jim or was it Huck and Jim? sitting by a fire on the banks of the Mississippi in the early evening, with the sound of frogs croaking in the background. There’s something truly magical about that scene and that memorable chorus.

But I digress. If you are hearing frogs in your neighborhood or in your backyard, you likely live near a stream, a pond or some standing water of some sort. We happen to live close to two large retention ponds that support a small nearby subdivision. The chirping has been going on for several weeks now.

“What you are hearing is a bit later (than normal) this year,” says Christina Woolf, a senior naturalist at Islandwood IslandWood on Bainbridge Island. “Usually, they start chirping in mid-to-late February but they (were maybe) later this year probably because of the warmer winter we had.”

Woolf, who is an expert in amphibian vocalization and monitoring, says our Pacific Chorus Frogs, which some folks call Tree Frogs, will be chirping or croaking through the end of April and into early May. Then, “their breeding pools (usually) dry up,” she explains. “They can’t lay eggs if they’re not in water.”

What all the chirping is really about is, well, the birds and the bees, so to speak. Male frogs are doing their level best to impress their female counterparts in hopes of mating. “Male frogs are talking (chirping and croaking) to female frogs,” Woolf says, basically announcing, “’I’m the most fit male out here, mate with me.’”

The whole process is something you probably learned about in your high school biology class. It begins in water, as a male and female frog mate. Not long after the female lays an egg, which hatches into a tadpole. These little creatures eventually metamorphose into frogs. (By the way, as a general rule, female frogs can lay up to 30,000 eggs once or twice a year depending on the species).

The transitional stage between a tadpole and a full-fledged frog is what Woolf calls a “frogette,” a small green, brown or mottled-colored amphibian you might see hopping around your lawn or garden. These tiny frogs possess color-changing chemicals in their skin.

Once these frogetts mature and turn into an adult frog, they spend most of their lives roaming around in the woods or nearby forests, breathing through both their skin and nostrils to stay alive. Once spring rolls around – or the temperature feels right – the frogs return to the same waters where they bred before and start the mating season all over again.

Woolf doesn’t “have a (good) sense of the population” of Pacific Chorus Frogs on Bainbridge Island, but she says the population of amphibians – including frogs – is generally going down. For example, most toad species, which were found on the island for thousands of years, no longer exist on Bainbridge. They can, however, still be found in Poulsbo and the Olympic Peninsula.

“We just didn’t have the breeding habitat any longer” for the toad (a distant cousin of the frog), Woolf explains. “We live on an island; everything is just that much more precious.”

She says the best approach most residents can take to preserve our amphibian friends is to create a backyard pond, if possible, leave root balls from trees and shrubs in place, and inspect your lawn before you mow it. Also, “be mindful of amphibians crossing roads or paths.” … and “don’t wash your car in the driveway. The pollutants go right into the water and have a cumulative impact.”

The fact is, Woolf adds, “we co-exist with these amphibians. They impact us and we impact them. We need to treat them like they are (indeed) precious (creatures).” Croak, chirp, rib it!

Learn more about frogs and their life cycles by visiting: Spring Frog Sounds: Spring Peepers and Wood Frogs | The Old Farmer’s Almanac

Photo of Backyard Blood Moon by Kevin Dwyer; Suquamish Beach Fire, with moon rising, by Chris Miller. 

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