50 Bird - Lore 



but are nevertheless distinguishable. 1 have never succeeded in identify- 

 ing them, but I suspect that they are the sounds which we hear so 

 frequentl\ 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 that it 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 quar-ar-r-r-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 stagnant water 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 May 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 ivitchery-ivitchery-ivitcbery of the Maryland 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 



