The Spring Peeper 



(Hyla crucifer) 



Ethel H. Hausman 



New Haven, Conn. 



"And the frogs pipe in chorus, 

 'It is spring, it is spring.'" 



Among all of the inspiriting spring 

 melodies, there is none — not even the note 

 of the Song Sparrow — ^which is more wel- 

 come and cheering than the shrill, yet 

 musical piping of the little Spring Peeper, 

 he who used to be called Hyla pickeringii, 

 but who now bears the name, Hyla 

 crucifer, or cross bearer. 



The voices of Spring Peepers may be 

 expected to gladden the air about the 

 middle of March, in our locality, though 

 records tell us that they have been heard 

 as early as the last of January-. The 

 Httle singers do not emerge from their 

 winter hiding places under moss and 

 leaves imtil the temperature has reached 

 about fifty-four degrees, and then it is 

 that the first pipings are heard as the 

 procession of males starts from the 

 meadows bound for pools and shallow 

 ponds in the lowlands. The first staccato 

 of song gives way to a fuller chorus, tmtil 

 nature's grand antiphonal noctiuTie 

 reaches its full power during the first 

 weeks of May, and then diminishes until 

 at the first of June only a few voices are 

 occasionally heard. The piping is re- 

 sumed again late in summer, but never in 

 Hyla crucifer such volvime as in the spring. It is a 



pleasxire to think that the distribution of this little musician is very 

 wide, for its range extends all over New England, New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, Mar\'land, North and South Carolina. Ohio, Illinois, Michi- 

 gan, and from New Brunswick to Manitoba in Canada. How man}' 

 people wait anxiously each year for the first notes of the spring 



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