In November after a bit of rain, I heard some frogs in the bush behind the Community Centre. I used the Frog ID app on my phone to record the frog and submitted my recording on the app. Frog ID is a citizen science project to help identify, locate and count frogs in Australia. Scientists at the Australian Museum use this information for the protection and conservation of frogs.
The identification has just come back. The frog that I recorded was a Pseudophryne coriacea, a red-backed toadlet. It is a small species of frog with an orange or red back with small black or grey spots or patches. It is black or grey on the head and it has a belly with black and white marbling.
The identification took about 5 weeks to come back. I had a bit of trouble submitting my recording because of the poor phone coverage behind the Community Centre. I had to walk around until I had one bar of phone reception and it took a while to upload.
Now that we have had some more rain, I am keen to get some more recordings in some other spots, hopefully of some different species. There are a few locations along Cove Boulevard where the sound of frogs is deafening at different times of the year. Who knows, we may find that we have some rare and endangered species if we care to listen and send in our recordings.
Photo by Jodi Rowley
