Saturday, March 6, 2010

A froggy blog

I went shopping yesterday and now have plants galore! I was planning to spend today toiling, and post some photos of my "instant" garden tonight. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas, with thunderstorms and nasty high winds.

So instead, I'm blogging about..... frogs.

We have a creek at the end of our street, which has been mostly dry since we've been here. Except after rain, and even then it dries up into a chain of muddy puddles pretty quickly. But there's a permanently boggy area in the cow paddock round the corner, and over in the grandly-named wetlands, we have some big ponds too. Which is apparently water enough for the local frog population.

On my walks around the estate, I love to hear the frog calls. I never have any idea what kind they are, but the croaks and clicks always make me smile. One has a really funny call, that goes kind of like this:

Ga-bonk, ga-BONK.

So I named it the Gabonka frog, much to Bike Boy's amusement. (Remember this, I'll come back to it later)

Last night, I went out to pick my husband up from the station at 11:30pm (long story) and almost stepped on what I thought was a moth on the front porch, partly under the door. I closed the door and looked closer and realised it was actually a tiny stripey frog. When we got home, I warned Bike Boy not to step on the teeny weeny frog on the porch. He immediately decided that he had to rescue the little froggie and return it to its environment, right NOW.

I was then treated to the hilarious sight of my slightly beer-affected spouse chasing a frog around the porch at midnight. He did catch it eventually, and toddled off down the street, with Froggie cupped in his hands. He let it go on the creek bank and came home happy.

Today I decided to find out what kind of frog it was. Turns out it was a Clicking Froglet:



The Frogs Australia website is awesome - it even has audio of the calls of most frogs. So that got me thinking about my Gabonka frog..... which I found via his funny call:




....and here's the bloody hilarious part: one of this frog's common names is (wait for it)..... the Pobblebonk. POBBLEBONK????

And Bike Boy thought MY name for it was funny!

If you want to hear him ga-BONKing, go here, scroll down to the bit that says Call, and click on the audio link.

6 comments:

kexkez said...

Sorry you've not been able to get stuck into planting. Gotta love the froggies. Last year just before we moved in we heard a really odd sound over in the bush to the s.e. of our block. Looking forward to winter again when hopefully it will return. The sound reminded me of the predator sounds from the movie. It was kind of creepy but it turned out it's a frog too. So now I'm looking forward to hearing it again. It's called the moaning frog. -->http://frogwatch.museum.wa.gov.au/Southwest/DarlingRanges/384.aspx

kexkez said...

hmm actually not sure that this was the frog i was looking for. it had more of a creepy sound. I'll have to investigate further. Hope bikeboy isn't trying to doge any frogs when he goes riding. could be a disaster.

Kek said...

There are some really odd frog calls - you have some especially funny ones in W.A. I particularly like the "motorbike frog". You also have gabonka frogs - the "banjo frog" is another name for it.

I just went for a walk along the footpath in front of our house and I can hear clicking froglets calling, just can't quite pinpoint exactly where from. Probably because the bogans behind us are having a noisy party in their garage with the door open. Bah! I think I like frogs better than people....

kexkez said...

Glad to hear another frog/ the same frog returned. It says good things about your garden.

Yes we do have some funny ones. I like banjo frogs and my MIL/FIL have motorbike frogs in their garden. They even breed them for the frog watch people. We had a lovely big green motorbike frog at the rental last year. i found him/her hiding in my plant pots. I'm hoping some will turn up here once we get a garden going.I've heard the clicking ones here too.

Toni said...

Thanks for the chuckle picturing your DH chasing the frog :)

So good to hear that the frogs are around despite all the building going on.

Hopefully he'll be a permanent addition to your garden.

Lisa said...

Thinking of someone chasing a frog after a few beers made me smile :D

I'm sure there are frogs near me, at night time I keep hearing noises that I can only put down to frogs - no idea what else it could be!

I agree with you, that if you have frogs then you have done a great job on the garden!!