Local man makes ‘awesome’ discovery of treefrog not seen here in 100 years
Walking through the woods of Oakwood Park, Mike Evans made the find of a lifetime — the discovery of a rare gray treefrog that he said hasn’t been documented in the Windsor area for at least 100 years.
Evans, 41, who has photographed birds for the last 10 years, was wandering through one of his favourite habitats for spotting warblers in May when he heard a sound he wasn’t familiar with.
So he recorded audio of what he thought was a bird song and sent it off to some biologist and field naturalist friends hoping they could identify it for him.
To his surprise, it turned out to be the mating call of the gray treefrog, a warty species with large suction-cup-like toe pads and a short, flute-like trill call.
“It was awesome to discover,” Evans said. “They haven’t been seen in a hundred years but they have been heard in that location.”
The location is a former sanctuary that was once home to Oakwood elementary school. Evans said his friend, Windsor field naturalist Russell Jones, has audio of the frogs from that same spot that he recorded three years ago.
But no one had seen the tiny creatures until Evans was able to photograph them.
A videographer/producer with Suede Productions, Evans was determined to capture images of the frogs.
“I was in there a bit and I kept hearing them but they’re so tiny and hard to find. I got lucky that one day,” he said. “I had devoted a lot of my time to going out there and looking for them. So it was a payoff.
“I really wasn’t going to give up until I did find them.”
Evans described the mottled-green amphibians, with an orangey/yellow underbelly, as about the size of an egg yolk.
“You can fit three of them in the palm of your hand,” he said. “Only the males croak so we don’t know if they’re in there breeding. We haven’t been able to find any females because they don’t make a peep.”
Three separate males have been spotted.
“These guys, it’s their job to sit still and they’re kind of chameleon-like, where they will take on the colour of the tree that they’re sitting on,” he said. “They’re so hard to see.”
Evans, a longtime South Windsor resident who attended Oakwood school as a child, often rides his bike by the wooded area with his daughters Brynley, 5, and Avery, 3.
“If (the frogs are) calling out there, they’re very loud. So I’ve been able to ride out there on my bike with my kids and say, ‘Oh yeah, I hear them. They’re still out there.”’
He hopes the gray treefrogs will thrive here so that in years to come, his children will be able to enjoy them.
Evans said Jones traced records back and there’s no mention of them as part of the local species here in Essex County.
Because they like treed wetland areas, much of which was taken over for farmland in Essex County, “we really didn’t have the habitat to support them,” he said.
But the construction of the Herb Gray Parkway and its land bridge connecting Windsor with Lasalle may help the species find additional habitat.
“Even 10 years ago, these treefrogs would have had to cross Huron Line, which is (one of ) the busiest roads in North America. But now it’s all underground.
“Now the frogs and the coyotes
Now the frogs and the coyotes and everybody can just walk right over the land bridge (making) it easier for them to spread out
and everybody can just walk right over the land bridge (making) it easier for them to spread out,” Evans said.
“So maybe the treefrogs will go over to the Spring Garden area. There’s a beautiful pond over there for them. They’ll flourish for the first time in decades.”