50 Bird - Lore
but are nevertheless distinguishable. I have never succeeded in identify- ing them, but I suspect that they are the sounds which we hear so frequently in the marshes toward the close of April and early in May, and which. although generally similar to those made by the leopard frog, are more disconnected and of a sharper, harder quality, suggesting the slow grating of some gigantic creature's teeth.
Comparatively few of the people who consider themselves familiar with our common garden toad are aware thatlit is the author of the shrill, prolonged. and not unpleasant trilling sounds which, mingled with the peeping of the hylas and the “snoring” of the leopard frogs, may be heard in April in almost any marsh or shallow pool. This trill is the love song of the male and is peculiar to the mating season, which both sexes spend together in the water. After the eggs~ are laid the male, at least, continues to frequent the shores of ponds and rivers where. through the latter part of May and most of June, it utters, chiefly by night and at short, regular intervals, an exceedingly loud and discordant qum‘varvrvr—r.
Still another batrachian voice which may be heard about the end of April, once or twice in a lifetime, if one is very fortunate, is that of the spade-footed toad. This singular creature is said to live at a depth of several feet under ground and to leave its subterranean retreat not oftener than once in every seven years and then but for a single day and night, during which its noisy amours are accomplished and the eggs laid. I have twice found it thus engaged, on both occasions in a hollow filled with stagnantvwater near my home in Cambridge and not far from the Fresh Pond marshes. Although the second and last experience happened over thirty years ago I can still remember with perfect distinctness the tremendous din which the spade-foots made about this little pond during an entire day and the whole of the following night. Their notes, as I recall them, were all croaking and outrageously loud and raucous, but they varied somewhat in pitch, although all were rather low in the scale,
By the beginning of IVIay the marshes have almost wholly lost their bleached, watery aspect and are everywhere verdant with sprouting rushes and rapidly-growing grass. A week or two later they are perhaps more attractive than at any other period of the year. The grass is now six or eight inches high and the bushes and isolated trees are covered with unfolding leaves or pendulous catkins of the most delicate shades of tender green, golden yellow and pink or salmon, while scattered shad bushes, crowded with creamy white blossoms, stand out in bold relief about the edges of the thickets. Yellow Warblers are singing in the willows, and the witcbery-witrberyAwilcbery of the NIaryland Yellow— throat comes from every briar patch or bed of matted, last year‘s grass. A few Long-billed Marsh Wrens have also arrived and are performing
