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:
Sounds inside the rescue pod (.wma)
Toad Mountain harlequin frog calling in the rescue pod (.wma)
Cricket breeding room (.wma)
A chorus of leaf-litter toads in the rain forest (.wma)
Red-eyed tree frog calling in the wild (.wma)
Tungara frogs calling back and forth in the wild (.wma)
Smokey jungle frog defense call (.mp4)
–Lindsay Renick Mayer, Smithsonian’s National Zoo