SPRING PEEPERS

By Lauren Parmelee, Senior Director of

Their Latin name is Pseudacris crucifer. The first part indicates they are members of the chorus frog genus and their species name means “cross bearer” because of their distinctive "X" shaped marking on their backs.

Are you ready for signs of spring after a long cold winter?

The calls of spring peepers are a good clue that warmer weather is around the corner because these tiny frogs are LOUD when they gather near wetlands to breed. Listen for the male frogs’ shrill peeping just after the first warm rain. One frog starts to peep at a rate of twenty times per minute, and soon more join in until the sound is almost deafening.

The males are calling in early spring to attract females who prefer to lay their eggs in shallow wetlands where there are no fish to prey upon them. A female peeper will lay 800–1200 eggs which the male fertilizes as they are deposited.

Like other frogs, spring peepers emerge from the egg as a tadpole that will eat algae and tiny organisms until it metamorphoses into an adult. Depending upon the weather, an egg will hatch after just two days or up to two weeks and a tadpole will transform into an adult after 6 to 12 weeks of life.

Spring peepers are tree frogs with sticky toes that enable them to climb up stalks of grass and the bark of trees, but they actually spend a lot of their time on the forest floor or under the leaf litter hunting for beetles, spiders, ants and flies.

Peepers come in various shades of tan, brown, gray and green but they all have an X-mark on their backs. They are so tiny (just one inch in length) and well-camouflaged that they can be very hard to find even when they are calling close to you.

Spring peepers are common and widespread through eastern North America, but like most amphibians, loss of habitat, pesticides and climate change are all threats to their populations.