THE SOUNDS THAT HERALD SPRING
There’s been not a peep, nor quack or croak.
But very soon, wood frogs, defrosted from their winter shutdowns, will head to vernal pools and start a quacking quarreling-duck racket. Then peepers will emerge, singing loudly in full chorus.
For humans who follow amphibians, it’s one of the first sounds of spring.
“I have not heard them yet,” said Ann Taylor, executive director of Redding’s New Pond Farm nature center. “But I’ve been purposefully leaving my window open to listen for them.”
“I would suggest there are wood frogs already out,” said Billy Michael od Bethel, who annually tracks emerging frogs and salamanders.
Michael said he has yet to check out the vernal pools in Huntington State Park, which overlaps the Bethel-Newtown border.
“They could be in a pool up there,” he said. “I wouldn’t doubt it.”
Throughout the state and the country, people are doing the same thing, joining the citizen science project Frog Watch USA – the amphibian equivalent of the Christmas Bird Count.
Run by the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Frog Watch gives volunteers basic training on frog and toad identifications, based on the sounds they make. The volunteers then go to a local pond, marsh, or vernal pool, listen throughout the spring and summer, and send in their findings.
Three organizations in western Connecticut — the Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport and the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk — are sponsoring Frog Watch.
The Maritime Aquarium will hold its final Frog Watch virtual training session from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on March 25. For more information go www.maritimeaquarium.org/citizen-science
Bridget Cervero, manager of the aquariums citizen science programs, said there are about 100 volunteers in the program so far.
“About 25 are returning volunteers, which is really great,” she said.
The Norwalk River Watershed Association and the Woodcock Nature Center in Ridgefield and Wilton are collaborating on vernal pool activities this year, including virtual workshops, creating Frog and Toad Abode kits and a sold-out vernal pool walk on March 20 – World Frog Day.
“We want people to see vernal pools,” said Sarah Breznan, Woodcock’s director of education
Along with the pleasure of tramping around the edges of moist terrain listening for high-pitched peepers in spring or the bullfrogs’ mid-summer basso croak, the project serves to monitor the American amphibians’ increasing peril.
The U.S. Geological Survey has reported that
amphibian species are declining in every region of America at a rate of almost 4 percent a year. Some species may disappear in the U.S. by 2040, the survey says.
Connecticut has 11 species of frog and toads. One, the eastern spadefoot toad is a state endangered species while another, the northern leopard frog, is a species of special concern.
Michael Ravesi, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said frogs are important to the state’s ecosystem as both predators are prey.
Frogs eat insects, Ravesi said. In turn they’re eaten
by owls, foxes, raccoons and coyotes.
“Just about anything that can get its mouth around a frog will eat them,” Ravesi said.
In vernal pools, frog eggs feed insects, opossums, skunks and turtles. When the eggs hatch into tadpoles, the tadpoles eat vegetation and bacteria, Breznan said. In turn, a variety of predators dig into tadpoles at the vernal pool smorgasbord.
“Bigger frogs eat smaller frogs,” she said.
Frogs are also important as indicator species. They have permeable skin and can absorb anything flowing into an ecosystem’s
water supply. If frogs are in trouble, something’s wrong.
“It can be weed killer or detergent, anything,” said Breznan, of Woodcock Nature Center
The DEEP’s Ravesi said there’s now evidence that the drugs humans take work their way into water systems — either because people flush pills down the toilet, or excrete medication in their wastes. That may be harming frogs as well.
“Just releasing it from our own bodies has implications for frogs,” he said.
Another factor is human destruction of amphibian habitat. Climate change may add to amphibians’ decline.
Wood frogs and peepers are forest dwelling frogs who only head to vernal pools — small pools filled by spring rain and melting snow — to mate.
If the climate warms too quickly in the spring, Ravesi said, those pools may dry up too quickly, interfering with the progression of egg-to-tadpole-tofrogs.
So listen, while you still have the chance.
“Wood frogs and peepers,” Ravesi said. “They kind of herald spring.”
WESTPORT — Officials are considering a $220 million budget that, among other things, could make internet use better.
The proposed spending plan, which is about 3.3 percent more than the current year, includes $77.1 million for town expenses — about 2.2 percent more than the current year — and the $127 million budget the school board adopted, as well as additional education expenses that don’t fall under that.
First Selectman Jim Marpe said the town will also focus on enhancing wireless and fiber optics infrastructure with possible publicprivate partnerships.
“As more and more people are working from home, it’s very important to make sure it’s not just the town that has ability to have the best high speed internet, but also be sure that our residents have access to that as well,” he said
There is a caveat: Marpe noted at a recent budget presentation that the health care costs could change.
“I believe our department heads have been very diligent in trying to prepare budgets that reflect the realities of our economy, but also the realities of the service demands and all of the demands that a town like Westport expects,” Marpe said.
Marpe said some of last year’s challenges are still present, including the coronavirus, recycling costs, cybersecurity and increased demand on town services and infrastructure with more multi-family housing. There’s also the added challenge of potential changes to funding because of proposed state legislation. “There’s some legislative items in the hopper that might have the potential to significantly impact some of the revenue prospects we’ve been counting on,” he said during a recent budget presentation.
He said the town plans to continue a number of initiatives from this year, including the shared dispatch center with Fairfield, repaving, infrastructure upgrades and the affordable housing project.
There will also be new initiatives, such as improving the Inn at Longshore, improving Riverside Park and Lillian Wadsworth Arboretum and planning for Parker Harding Plaza. Marpe said one of the challenges will be transitioning government back post-COVID-19.
“We really don’t know what that looks like yet,” he said.
The town budget includes three new positions, though the additional firefighter is there as human resources resolves a contractual issue, Marpe said. It also adds a staff member at the transfer station due to a recent audit that raised safety concerns and reinstates a parks superintendent that was taken out when the former superintendent retired a few years ago. Marpe said they had tried to split the superintendent’s tasks within the department but it didn’t work and so he’s requesting the position return.
“While I’m never excited about adding positions, I believe the ones we’re adding are justified,” he said.
Parks and recreation's overall increase is nearly $253,000, which is also due to the increase in minimum wage that affects the 300 or so seasonal employees.
The biggest increase in the budget is for insurance, pensions and benefits, which is $815,000 more than the current year and brings the total to nearly $21 million — one of the biggest portions of the overall town budget.
Public safety is the next biggest expense at $23 million, which is about $363,000 more than the the current year.
That increase includes $207,000 for fire and emergency management and $187,000 for other expenses, which Marpe said is largely due Aquarion’s charges for water to the fire hydrants.
“It’s somewhat an unexpected cost,” he said of the water. “In terms of absolute dollars, it’s not that dramatic, but in terms of percentage, it’s certainly noticeable.”
Public works has an increase of about $263,000, which Marpe said is due to infrastructure investments.
Another increase is $70,600 for information technology, largely due to the cybersecurity improvements to ensure “there’s a quality computer system that’s as bullet proof as possible from outside forces,” Marpe said.