​One beautiful blue and gold afternoon late last fall, Iren and I wandered through a nearby arroyo. As always we were on the lookout for whatever might capture our attention. Both of us were desert “beachcombers” by nature, each with her unique preferences.
 
On a steep hillside amidst some scree I glimpsed an uprooted cactus clinging, somewhat desperately I thought, to the slope. Almost all of its roots were exposed. How had it gotten there I wondered. It appeared to have tumbled down the mountain, or perhaps it had been pushed by water or trampled on by cattle.
 
I recognized the cactus immediately because even in its desiccated state I could identify the species; it was a Claret cup cactus, a native to the area, and a wild hedgehog that was very dear to my heart.
 
I had first seen one of these beautiful cactus blooming at Iren’s the June before last. The color of flame, I thought it was a summer solstice vision.
 
The following spring I planted my own claret cactus in the ground after I moved into the casita and after it bloomed for a few days in June some creature feasted on the startling deep orange fruit. Eventually one of my gophers munched down its roots. One morning late that summer my spiny friend simply toppled over dead. I was bereft... Out of all of my wild dug cactus this one was my favorite.
 
In it’s present state the cactus in front of me was shriveled almost beyond recognition. The poor plant had a steel gray cast to it. Neither Iren nor I held out much hope for life but I couldn’t resist bringing it home anyway.
 
I have been a plant gatherer all my life, paying particular attention to flowers, herbs and plants that are native to a particular place. Around my house in Maine I have transplanted so many herbs and wildflowers over a period of thirty plus years that my land is literally awash in wild species from other micro-climates in this area.
 
Returning to the casita with my thorny friend I decided to plant it in a pot next to the other cacti that had survived the attentions of my wily gopher, teaching me in the process that it was useless to plant anything in that dirt without an underlying screen to protect its roots. Every wild cactus I had was now living in a pot.
 
That first night I left the cactus roots in water; the next morning I placed it lovingly in a frog pot and left it in a protected place by the southern wall where it remained all winter. Every single day when I came out the door I gazed at that very dead looking cactus, willing it to come back to life. I never gave up hoping…
 
Early in March I noticed that the cactus seemed to be absorbing water because it’s wrinkles were starting to smooth out. Next the cactus took on a pale greenish cast, and this was when I realized that my rescue had been successful – this cactus was going to live!
 
However, nothing prepared me for what happened in April. One morning I discovered a small reddish bump on my cactus. My spiny friend was actually going to bloom!
 
Soon there were seven bumps that matured into seven tightly closed teardrop blossoms.
I knew from reading that this hedgehog cactus could grow in clumps as much as 3-4 feet across, and that the brilliant blood orange or scarlet flowers – depending on the soil type - often covered the entire plant. Someday, I must witness a whole colony of these cacti. If anyone knows of one in our area, please let me know!  
Even though I had already returned to the North County before the cactus flowers actually opened I saw pictures of mine. I didn’t mind not seeing them – these flowers were emblazoned in my mind, and besides, this reclamation story has such a happy ending! 

In Abiquiu, late one March morning, one glorious yellow swallowtail visited my narcissus, grape hyacinths and my glowing cactus garden. I watched this one butterfly with deep pleasure mixed with concern remembering years of Tiger Swallowtail abundance. These beautiful insects used to arrive in such numbers….
 
Swallowtails have always been one of my favorite butterflies and over the period of a lifetime I have raised many eggs to the adult stage. Two mornings ago while walking up a woods road here in Maine I was delighted to see 10 swallowtails “puddling” (the most I have seen in years). Puddling occurs when the swallowtails gather together to drink from small oases that are filled with salt deposits, and I have only witnessed this phenomenon in the spring.
 
With the catastrophic decline of all insects, seeing these delicate creatures become more of a gift than ever before.
 
I cannot tell the difference between eastern and western swallowtails but both are found in wooded or riparian areas.
 
The 'tails' and bright blue and red eyespots, that most of the butterflies within this family are adorned with, are a form of 'back to front mimicry' that helps to confuse visual predators. Birds will strike at these eyespots, and often get nothing more than a fragment of wing, leaving the vital parts of the butterfly unscathed.

There are a number of other characteristic traits shared by members of this family. Eggs are dome shaped or smooth and globular, and usually laid singly on the host plant. In the Southwest, cottonwoods, willow, fruit trees and chokecherry are host plants; in the north, poplar, black cherry, hemlock, fruit trees, chokecherry and alders are favorite egg laying spots. In the garden growing anise, parsley, dill, or sweet fennel attracts this butterfly. I noticed the swallowtails loved the wild purple mustard flowers in Abiquiu. Here in Maine I see them on the flowering crabapples and Queen Annes lace (wild carrot). The larvae are smooth skinned, and greenish and eggs are laid underneath the leaves. Early instar larvae often mimic a bird dropping. All possess an organ called an osmeterium that discharges a foul scent that discourages visual predators. 

Another form of protection that all swallowtail larvae use is to simply drop off a plant on a silk cord that these wily insects manufacture themselves to escape predators.

It is estimated that perhaps one in hundreds of eggs laid by each female actually makes it through the four stages to adulthood.

Once hatched the larvae grow rapidly; eating, defecating, and resting in between each molt. The later instar larvae have large inflatable eyespots towards the front end of the body, which supposedly mimic a snake's head, and presumably warn off visual predators. These are gorgeous creatures.

In about three weeks the caterpillars are ready to pupate and spin a chrysalis around themselves. They will remain in the pre-pupa stage for about a day before becoming  swallowtails who rest while drying their wings unless diapause occurs.

Diapause is believed to be a 'risk-spreading' strategy in an environment that may or may not provide enough host plant material for another generation right away. Individuals are mature and ready to breed when optimal conditions exist. 

If you ever find swallowtail eggs (the internet has excellent images for the curious) try to raise them. It is impossible to relate how exciting it is to watch this entire process unfold and I recommend it to anyone as one of Nature’s routine miracles. 

I first fell in love with the fiery red and gold trailing nasturtiums that grew in my grandmother’s garden when I was a small child. I believe it was my mother who first put the flowers in salads making each summer meal a festive event.
 
Both my mother and grandmother were gardeners, so I grew up with plants indoors and out. I participated gathering all kinds of ripe seeds and pods including wrinkled bright green nasturtium seeds that looked to me like tiny human brains that shrunk to half their size as they dried on screens in my grandmother’s attic. Later the seeds were stored in paper bags until spring.
 
The awe that I experienced touching any seed as a child is still with me. That each one carries its own story, its own DNA (protein) signature, and the form the seed will take, is a miracle worth reflecting upon.
 
The first flowers I ever planted were nasturtiums that came from my grandmother’s garden. I prepared little rock crevices that lay against a giant granite boulder on Monhegan Island, my first adult home in Maine. Located 16 miles out to sea, this tiny fishing village was flooded by tourists in the summer. When people walked up from the wharf passing by my house, they often casually plucked the flowers I cared for so tenderly. Putting up a sign made no difference and I was too young to feel tolerance for these interlopers, eventually moving my precious nasturtium patch to another garden behind the house!
 
Although I used the leaves in salads I had a hard time picking the flowers, preferring instead to enjoy the feast by sight.
 
As soon as my two boys were old enough, each summer they bit off the fragrant flames, even as a multitude of bees and hummingbirds vied for sweet nasturtium nectar. Sometimes, when childhood friends came over, my sons would pick and eat a nasturtium creating quite a stir. Other children were amazed. No one ate flowers!
 
My children are long ago grown and gone and I am still planting nasturtiums some fifty years later.
 
Last year, I planted the few seeds that I had brought with me from Maine, here in Abiquiu. I also ordered some from a familiar catalog that specializes in organic and heirloom seeds. I grew my own in a large pot, and planted the others directly into the ground on the east side of the house. The nasturtiums in the pot had yellowing leaves and yet the seeds from both were equally abundant.
 
However, the nasturtiums I planted in the ground held more moisture after watering, providing my house lizards with giant green leaves that both lizards and buds thrived under during the monstrous July afternoon heat. When the vines finally began to trail in early August the plants were festooned with a riot of color, much to my joy and delight. Nasturtiums were still blooming well into November.
 
To this day, I rarely break off and eat a newly blooming flower as sweet as they are to the taste, although I regularly use the pungent peppery leaves in salads.
 
Saving seeds from year to year was simply part of what I did without thinking about it until I began to write and celebrate my own rituals (almost 40 years ago now).  After making that shift I incorporated nasturtium seed gathering as part of my fall equinox thanksgiving celebration. Every year I invoke both my mother and my grandmother in remembrance and gratitude for their legacy – a long and unbroken line of growing these flowers and saving their seeds. Someday, I hope to find someone who will carry on my nasturtium seed story after I am gone.
Both the leaves and petals of nasturtiums are packed with nutrition, containing high levels of vitamin C. Ingesting these plants provides immune system support, tackles sore throats, coughs, and colds, as well as bacterial and fungal infections.

Nasturtiums also contain high amounts of manganese, iron, flavonoids, and beta - carotene.
Studies have shown that the leaves have antibiotic properties; they are the most effective before flowering.
 
Nasturtiums are native to South America; they are not an imported species, perhaps lending credibility to the importance of sticking to native plants during this time of Earth’s most difficult transition. They are known as a companion plant. For example, nasturtiums grow well with tomato plants. In addition, they act as a natural bug repellent so I always have small patches of them growing around my vegetable garden. Aphids are especially attracted to them leaving more vulnerable plants alone. Rabbits and other creatures aren’t tempted to eat their leaves or flowers because of their sharp flavor, yet these trailing vines attract many pollinators. Bees of all kinds love them. Although nasturtiums are frost sensitive, I note that even after germination the little green shoots with hats simply hug the ground if the weather turns inclement. Unless the temperature dips below the mid 20’s nasturtiums always bounce back. In fact even a hard frost won’t take all the adult plants at once because their vining habit protects some of the seeds and some flowers. I always end up pulling the vines and the very last flowers before all are withered (this is when I consume the flowers after picking a small bouquet for the house). For all the above reasons I think these tough and tender vining plants have a good chance of surviving in the face of Climate Change. 

About two weeks ago my dogs and I had a glorious experience in a remote well wooded area. I had identified fresh bear sign and the three of us were following bear tracks into a steep gully when we came upon a young golden brown bear who emerged from behind a boulder to regard us with curiosity. When I spoke to him/her quietly the bear watched me intently; I lost time. Unafraid, the youngster eventually meandered on.
 
 And then, twice in the last week, I attended presentations during which people literally winced and moaned when the subject of Black bears was raised.
 
As a researcher who conducted a formal fifteen year academic study of these remarkable animals, I experienced the usual crushing dismay that Black bears continue to be perceived as such a threat to humans, when the truth is that they evolved as a prey animal, and remain so today. Black bears are cautious around humans unless they have been terrorized by them; then they avoid people at all costs. A human has a one in a million chance of being killed by a Black Bear; one is 17 more times likely to die of a spider bite.
 
How has the Black bear become such a perceived threat to humankind, especially in this country?
 
 One reason is that we are a culture that is hell bent on keeping the outdated “man against nature” paradigm alive. This perspective pits humans against all nonhuman species with a vengeance. In addition, the unconscious psychological mechanism of projection allows people to ascribe human killer tendencies/evil onto hapless animals giving us permission to kill them indiscriminately. We also imagine that we are separate and superior to every species but our own. How else could we continue to destroy the planet that is our home without whose resources we could not survive?
 
Of course, this cultural attitude of senseless fear of Black bears in particular (and all wild animals by extension) is also generated in this country by powerful special interest organizations like the NRA that deliberately uses the myth of the killer bear for its own benefit while pontificating that we have the “right” to bear arms, regardless of character or self responsibility. This current explosion of men with guns has created a crisis of monumental proportions at the cost of lives, human and non-human alike.  
 
One critical lesson I have learned in my life is to watch what people say and what they actually do. If there is a split between the two, pay attention to what these folks do and not what they say – talk is cheap. The so called state Wildlife organizations say they are interested in caring for/saving animals but what they do is to make money from ordinary folk and support hunters who slaughter animals as a matter of course. These people also expose their colossal arrogance/ignorance by stating as “truth” that all wild animals need to be managed by humans when animals have been around for 350 million years and humans for about 200,000 years. How utterly absurd.
 
There is something deeply repellent to me about the state fish and game folks who want us to slaughter bears for “fun” and for trophies, rarely for food. In fact, here in New Mexico, the head of a black bear is the symbol for our state wildlife organization.
 
There are a number of theories that attempt to address why bears in particular are so feared by humans. One of the most popular (not scholarly) of these is that humans were originally prey animals so we “instinctively” fear black bears and all wild animals. In this way of thinking the story is written into our DNA. The problem with this theory (and please remember that theories are intellectual ideas, and not truth with a capital “T”) is that it contradicts a multitude of children’s studies that indicate just the opposite – namely that very young children appear to be universally drawn to wild animals, especially bears, and are not afraid of them. There are many European children’s fairy tales that focus on the special relationship between bears and children. The helpful bear saves, protects, or imparts hidden knowledge to the children (especially girls) – like how to trust one’s instincts. In this country Native peoples honor the bear as a great healer/protector. Children who are afraid of animals have been taught to fear them by the adults around them.
 
And this brings me around to the power of the image to influence human perception. Look at any hunting magazine and you will note the frightening predatory look of the animal on the front cover. In Maine I used to dread August not just because it ushered in bear hunting season but also because in every store the covers of all the hunting magazines portrayed a GIANT Black Bear as a vicious bloody killer roaring with a huge open mouth full of teeth (contrary to popular belief, bears don’t roar at all). Exaggerating the size of an animal to generate unrealistic fear is something that every hunting magazine and state agency routinely does. Most adult male Black bears run about 250 pounds and yet these magazines/agencies always use the pictures of the exception to the general rule - the one that weighs 400 pounds - and is probably a captive animal. Most Black bears don’t survive long enough in the wild to attain a weight that even approaches this number, because the majority are shot as yearlings or sub adults. Yet, these horrific images work on us below the threshold of our awareness especially if we have no relationship to the wilderness and the wild animals around us. We have all been socialized/inculcated into a culture that supports the idea that any wild animal is “automatically” dangerous to humans. And creating mindless fear and revulsion for profit is something advertisers do well.
 
In reality Black bears are extremely shy, intelligent, curious animals that learn to avoid people unless people choose to befriend them as I did. My trust-based study was based on my ability to develop a personal relationship with any bear that would tolerate my presence and allow me entrance into her/his world. Needless to say, many would not. Too shy.
 
What I discovered early on was that Black bears always clearly communicated what they needed/wanted from me. My initial challenge was learning to understand their language. For example, most bears needed me to respect their need for space. Even the bears that chose to interact with me let me know when I got too close by huffing or slapping the ground, twig, bush, tree with a paw. I learned quickly that talking to them quietly relieved their anxiety. When badly frightened, Black bears moan like children, or do the opposite, hiss/chop and slap branches while hugging the upper limbs of their trees which they co–evolved with. Too often a bear’s anxiety is interpreted as aggression. It’s worth repeating that the Black bear evolved on this continent as a prey animal who was/is totally dependent on tree cover for protection (Infant bears begin climbing shortly after birth, exploring the den, long before they emerge in the spring).
 
In New Mexico we have a population of about 6000 Black bears that live in remote mountainous terrain, always close to some kind of water. If you happen to meet a Black bear while hiking, please don’t panic. Speak quietly to the animal and give it the space it needs to go on its way. For anyone who is really terrified of bears it is useful to carry a whistle. When blown the bear will disappear in an instant, I promise you.  

According to The Guardian, and every other source I consulted, krill (zooplankton) have suffered an 80 percent decline beginnings in the 70’s and currently creating a starvation scenario for many marine animals from whales to penguins.
 
A recent article in The New York Times states that we have also lost 80 percent of the insects on the planet. Insects and krill (zoo plankton) are at the bottom of the food chain and the loss of these animals on land and in the water is nothing short of catastrophic because all other life forms including humans depend on them to survive.
 
On land the insect loss is directly tied to insecticide use. In the water, pollution (partially due to insecticide use), and increased industrial fishing for krill are culprits.
 
Human induced Climate Change is also a fundamental factor.
 
How is it possible that we are unwilling/unable to face the fact that we are actively engaged in the process of our own self - destruction?    
 
I am writing this article on May Day. The cottonwood trees are feathered with pale green leaves, emerald green shoots and wildflowers abound. Gardens and fields are being tilled and planted. Adequate rain has blessed us creating seemingly unbelievable abundance. The river is a raging brown torrent ripping away the fragile shoreline; the acequias are running. The earth continues to celebrate renewal even as life on this planet becomes more threatened with each passing day.
 
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson probably because I have had only one tree frog singing through the cottonwoods. I feel the loss of the abundance of these amphibians keenly, recognizing that pesticides are to blame. I have also spent time in gardening places where all sorts of deadly chemicals are still being sold much to my raging disbelief.
 
My relationship with Rachel Carson stretches back to my childhood. I remember being so proud of the fact that I could read her book “The Edge of the Sea” at age twelve and understand everything she said. After moving from Monhegan Island to Southport Maine as a young mother, I discovered that Rachel Carson’s cottage was situated in the woods just behind my house. Although she died five years before I moved to Southport I suspect her influence on me lived on fueling my need to speak out as an environmental Earth activist, even now.
 
Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from  Chatham University in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachsuetts, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Carson wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time she wrote her first book, Under the Sea Wind. In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us. She won a National Book Award, a national science writing-prize and a Guggenheim grant, which, with the book’s sales, enabled her to move to Southport Island, Maine in 1953 to concentrate on writing. This book was followed by The Edge of the Sea published in 1955. Together, these books created a biography of the ocean and made Carson publically famous as a naturalist and science writer. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing.

Carson’s prophetic Silent Spring (1962) was written in response to the chemical pesticide use that became rampant after World War II. She also recognized that pesticides were killing her beloved birds. The book was first serialized in The New Yorker and then became a best seller, creating worldwide awareness of the dangers of environmental pollution.

Silent Spring suggested that the planetary ecosystem was reaching the limits of what it could sustain. She challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world. Carson   courageously stood behind her warnings of the consequences of indiscriminate pesticide use despite the threat of lawsuits from the chemical industry and accusations that she was too emotional and grossly distorted the truth (criticisms I too have endured as a nature writer – at least I am in good company).
​
Carson was also attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but continued to speak out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem.

Outlining the dangers of chemical pesticides graphically, the book eventually led to a nationwide ban on DDT after Carson’s death, and sparked a movement that ultimately led to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
 
From my point of view probably the most important aspect of Carson’s writings is her view that human beings were just one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irrevocably.
 
Unfortunately, except for a few folks and some Indigenous peoples, these ideas with respect to species equality and the human ability to alter the earth’s ecology permanently are not part of the dominant cultural reality, especially in this country.
 
It is difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that up to the present we continue to export DDT and other toxic chemicals to third world countries like Mexico and South America, apparently believing that the toxicity in their water, soil and air will not have an effect on us while those of us who can afford it buy organic whatever.
 
Silent Spring was written in 1962 and almost 60 years later  pesticide use continues unabated. It is rarely mentioned that now we have even more lethal chemicals to use in our backyards. As far as I can tell the EPA was left behind somewhere back in the last century. By conservative estimates we have lost 50 percent of the non-human species on earth. How can we continue to believe that we will be able to survive these losses? We are on the edge of our own extinction.
 
As I walk out the door into this glorious blue, green, and gold May Day I am heartsick. Every year we draw closer to  ‘silent spring,’ the one without renewal. 

April’s second spring moon was almost full as she rose through the cracks of the cottonwoods. The acequias were filling across/down the field and a small amount of rain had fallen two days earlier. Diminutive lime green leaves feathered the trees. I was just walking in the house when I heard the call.
 
I stopped dead in my tracks, stunned. Then wondered if I was having some kind of audio – hallucination. A paracusia, or audio hallucination is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without auditory stimulus.
 
After all, it had three years since I had heard one of the most beloved sounds that I associate with spring…I kept listening, sat down on the steps, my ears on fire. The unmistakable trill.
 
After a timeless pause, the practical side of me took over. I entered the house, got my recorder, and began recording the song.
 
I have been listening to the musical trill of tree frogs since I was a child, and I knew this song by heart. A gray tree frog was singing just beyond what I call the magic portal, a natural cathedral framed by bowed cottonwoods that opens into the next field.
 
After about an hour of listening and recording even the skeptic in me was forced to accept that this really was a gray tree frog. Sadly, I never heard a female’s answering call. It was also clear that this male frog was not being challenged by other tree frogs (who call out to establish territories as well as to attract females) because there apparently were no others in the area.
 
This latter fact did not surprise me. All frogs have been endangered since the 1960’s and many have become extinct.
 
“In Silent Spring” written in 1962 a brilliant and dedicated biologist, and true “mother of the environmental movement” warned us about the Great Silence that was about to descend upon us as a result of indiscriminate pesticide use, and no one listened.
 
Frogs and toads are the canaries of water, land and air. Because they breathe through their skin they are indicators of the massive amounts of pollution we are allowing to consume our planet “forgetting,” of course, that eventually these pollutants will kill humans too (the ultimate dis-connect).
 
Just before I went to bed that night I opened the door and heard the solitary tree frog crying out to the moon.
 
The next morning I compared my recording with the songs of grey tree frogs online, and of course they were identical.
 
For two days I researched every New Mexican tree frog and listened to about 50 recordings and came up with nothing that sounded like the recording I had.
 
How could this be? Grey tree frogs are denizens of the wetlands and forested areas of the northeast – east of the Rockies.
 
Meanwhile, my beloved gray tree frog is still singing his heart out even during the day, something I have never heard any of the Maine gray tree frogs do unless rain or heavy mist blanketed the mountains. At these times they sing periodically.
 
As of this writing, even in the wind my little friend is still calling – the voice of yearning crying out in the wilderness… Three days in a row.
 
At present I have no answer to this particular mystery and welcome any commentary the reader might have.
 
What follows is a little natural history on these one to two inch frogs that come in every shade of gray to green, depending upon the vegetation they inhabit.
 
The gray tree frog's scientific name is Hyla versicolor. The frog’s ability to alter its skin color also changes with respect to the time of day and the surrounding temperature. When my brother and I were children we would capture these frogs and place them on leaves, lily pads, wild grasses, bark, lichen etc. just to watch how fast they could change color! Their skin becomes much lighter at night and darker during the day.
​
Gray tree frogs hibernate in the winter by taking refuge in trees. They survive sub -zero temperatures by producing glycerol to "freeze" during which time they also stop breathing while still being able to maintain interior metabolic processes. A virtual miracle, that.

Supposedly the gray tree frog's range covers much of the eastern United States, from northern Florida to central Texas and north to parts of southeastern Canada but obviously, some of these frogs are moving west, or were here in the first place. Tree frogs are an arboreal species that occupies a variety of wooded habitats. They are most often found in forests, swamps, on agricultural lands and in wooded backyards.

All need access to trees and a water source. I don’t know when it occurred to me that I am surrounded by the perfect habitat here as well as in Maine. When gray tree frogs are young and newly metamorphosed, they usually remain near the forest floor tucked into bark, detritus, or high grasses; later they transition to the forest canopy. As an adult I have captured some that like to hide in the rough bark of the white pines next to my brook (Maine).

Adult gray tree frogs mainly prey upon different types of insects at night because they are nocturnal. Mites, spiders, plant lice, snails and slugs are common prey. They may also occasionally eat smaller frogs, including other tree frogs. They search for insects in trees, where they can climb vertically or move horizontally with their fantastic  toe pads that cling like suction cups.
The males begin trilling in early spring, shortly after emerging from hibernation. In the mid-range areas males begin calling in late April to early May. In Maine I don’t begin to hear them until late May. Males call to females from trees and bushes that are usually close to overhanging streams or standing water.

The exact timing of breeding for gray tree frogs varies based on temperature and their location throughout the range. Most reproduction takes place early on, although the musical trilling lasts from late April to early August (May through September in Maine). Individuals may mate up to three times in a season.

Males are very territorial and will fight other males to defend their area. Fights may last 30 to 90 seconds and consist of wrestling, shoving, kicking and head butting until the subordinate male retreats. Females are sexually di-morphic (bigger) and initiate mating by approaching a calling male.1,000 to 2,000 eggs which are externally fertilized by the male. Since actual mating occurs while the frogs are floating in water, eggs are deposited into the water in small clusters, attached to a reed or some kind of floating debris. Tadpoles usually hatch after three to seven days, depending on the water temperature. As youngsters, these frogs are painted scarlet or orange-vermilion with black blotches around the edge of the crests, so unlike other species they are easy to identify. Bodies and tails are patterned with many specks of black and gold. Like most tadpoles, they eat algae and organic detritus found in the water. Tadpole development depends on water temperature and is variable, but vernal pools must have standing water for some time, a real challenge here in Abiquiu.

After three days of trilling this poor little frog must be exhausted. I can only hope that there is one female that will hear his call…