The Sounds of the Rescue Project

While I was in Panama at the end of August, one of the things that stuck me the most were the sounds. I didn’t experience what it’s like to be in an area of the rain forest where you’re deafened by frog calls (and as we know, those places are diminishing quickly), but I took my time to learn some new calls while out searching for the little (and sometimes big) guys. And sometimes the sounds were particularly meaningful–such as the sound of a lone La loma tree frog, Hyloscirtus colymba, calling in one of the rescue pods at Summit Zoo, indicating his comfort with his environment and readiness to breed. Below I share some of the noises that I recorded while there and many of which are cherished by anyone familiar with the project, including volunteers:

Shipping container turned rescue podSounds inside the rescue pod (.wma)

Toad Mountain harlequin frogToad Mountain harlequin frog calling in the rescue pod (.wma)

CricketsCricket breeding room (.wma)

Leaf-litter toad (Bufo typhonius)A chorus of leaf-litter toads in the rain forest (.wma)

Red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis calidryas)Red-eyed tree frog calling in the wild (.wma)

Túngara Frog (Engystomops pustulosus)Tungara frogs calling back and forth in the wild (.wma)

Smokey jungle frog (Leptodactylus pentadactylus)Smokey jungle frog defense call (.mp4)

–Lindsay Renick Mayer, Smithsonian’s National Zoo