I was walking with Sheeba the dog through the housing development near my house the other night and although some of the blocks are empty; the roads are asphalt, the empty land is sand, weeds and rubbish and the only water source is garden hoses and water features (feng shui all the way). Despite this concrete jungle, I heard frogs chirruping away. I first heard one frog in someone’s garden as I walked past, then a few houses along another frog in another garden. Then I came to the park on the edge of the development and the frogs here were having a party.
The park is not very big, grassed, with some trees on the edge and a little bit of landscaping with indigenous shrubs on one side. The grassed area is basically just a dip in the land, as if it was once a drain and its heritage has not been forgotten – in winter it becomes mushy, muddy grass. The local council wishes the land would just do what its been told and allow the water to drain through the storm water drains they’ve put in, but this land’s will won’t be bent. I think they should let it fill (with some drainage if necessary) and plant reeds and paper barks around the area. A park near a house where I used to live had a billabong similar to this and the birds and other wildlife loved it.
But I didn’t think this mud puddle would have frogs. Its been raining a bit this week (autumn’s arrived) and so the land is probably starting to mush up, but frogs can’t really hide in mown grass and so they are living it up in the shrubs on one side of the park.
I was able to get quite close to them, without interrupting their song, but I had to be very quite and move slowly (I wasn’t so successful with the individual frogs in the gardens). I didn’t see them, it being pretty dark and even if I had a torch I wouldn’t have wanted to scare them into silence.
The presence, or more likely absence, of frogs can be an indicator of the health of an ecosystem. Their skin, which absorbs water and whatever is dissolved in that water, is very sensitive to changes in their environment, so they may be the first life-form to disappear from a distressed ecosystem. A worldwide decline in frog numbers has been happening for years. The fact that frogs are living happily in suburbia amazes me. Many animals and plants have adapted to life in our cities, but I didn’t think frogs would join their ranks. A children’s book called Home by Narelle Oliver (Omnibus Books, 2006) describes the city life of a pair of peregrine falcons and their raising of chicks atop a skyscraper. It’s based on two peregrine falcons that did this in Brisbane, Australia. The book has just been short-listed for the Children’s Book Council of Australia, Picture Book of the Year, 2007. It’s dedicated to Frodo and Frieda, the names given to the pair by a Brisbane newspaper, which also set up a Frodocam of the birds.
After hearing the frogs, I decided not to give up hope for the Earth just yet. :)
=^.^=
