The First Spring Peepers of 2024 Have Arrived in New Milford

It appears that all of the groundhogs were right last month, Spring 2024 seems to be arriving early this year in Connecticut, I heard my first Spring Peeper of 2024 on the way in this morning in New Milford.

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If you live near a pond or a swamp, or any fresh water, get your earplugs ready, the Spring peepers are maturing right now. Over the next 8 weeks millions of tadpoles are going to mature into Spring Peeper frogs all around you. These small frogs only grow to be about an inch in length, but oh are going to loudly announce their entrance into this world. When you get twenty or thirty thousand of them in one area? The noise these tiny creatures can be comforting to some, deafening to most. Here's a video from AudubonGuides that captures this amazing symphony.

I heard my first Spring Peeper of 2024 this morning while I was passing Conn's Pond, the pond behind the athletic fields of the Canterbury School in New Milford on Rt. 202. There weren't many, I just heard a couple of single peeps, but the sound is unmistakable.

Spring Peepers are primarily nocturnal, preferring to use the cover of darkness to get loud instead of getting picked off by any predator in the daytime. It's only the male Peepers that make the noise, inflating the small sac like a balloon and exhaling with a loud mating call. Female peepers search out the male peepers with the loudest and most frequent peeps, and I'll bet that's where you got the idea to put that loud exhaust on your car, right sir? It only works for frogs.