This vocalizing Pine Barrens treefrog is in a Florida panhandle locale.
Quonk, quonk, quonk. Some say these calls are reminiscent of the honks of geese. I’ve never been able to pick up on this similarity, but to each their own. Instead I hear the vocalizations of the beautiful Pine Barrens treefrog, Hyla andersonii, as being similar to, but a bit higher in pitch and more rapidly repeated than, the calls of the more common green treefrog.

Known to occur in the bogs of the New Jersey Pine Barrens and the Carolinas, it was not until 1970, when researcher Steve Christman found a road killed specimen in Florida, that this beautiful green, orange, and plum, colored treefrog was known to occur in acidic/sphagnaceous/steephead habitats on Florida’s western panhandle as well as in adjacent Alabama.

Although not common, now that more than 150 small populations have been found, it is recognized that this treefrog is not quite as rare as once thought.

This pair of Amazonian hog-nosed vipers lay quietly at trailedge.
Have you ever while herping, stopped dead in your tracks thinking that you just walked by something you should have seen but you weren’t sure just what it was? I’ve done that a couple of times with copperheads and in no case do I know what it was that alerted me.

So knowing that I am fully capable of occasional oversights, whenever I have that feeling I stop and spend considerable time ascertaining what it was that caused that feeling.

I was on a forest darkened Amazonian trail and I had just stopped. Something wasn’t quite right. Undergrowth was sparse but fallen leaves of primary canopy, now variously hued in browns, yellows, and russets, littered the forest floor.

I studied the trail edges on both sides. Nothing. I walked back a few feet and studied anew. Nothing. I pulled out a pocket flashlight and restudied. Still nothing. I had just about decided that I had responded to a false alarm when not 12 inches from my foot a brown and russet leaf moved. No. It wasn’t a leaf. It was a snake. Wrong again. It was 2 snakes. Half hidden in leaf litter was a pair of Amazonian hog-nosed vipers! Not big, not bright, but a spectacular find.

Green now, this barker may assume a spotted or brown color within minutes.
The barking has started. Well, not barking really. The sound is more of an oft repeated explosive “toooonk,” the sound of barking treefrogs, Hyla gratiosa, at home. Now, rather than just being called the largest treefrog in Florida, when size is mentioned it requires the qualification of the word “native.” The barking treefrog is the largest NATIVE treefrog in Florida, its 2 5/8” snout-vent length now being far surpassed by the up to 5” long Cuban treefrog that is somehow steadily adapting to lower temperatures and expanding its range northward.

Barkers breed in shallow, ephemeral, ponds and usually vocalize while floating. More often than not they anchor themselves at the preferred calling site by holding to a stem of water-surface vegetation with one front foot.

Although in size they may now be surpassed, they cannot be surpassed in their chameleon–like color changes. Within minutes the same frog may change ground color from brown to olive to bright green and have unedged dorsal spotting, no dorsal spotting, or dorsal spotting edged with a narrow border of lighter pigment.

Time to go. A nice chorus of barkers are “tooonking” again.