Hi folks — I’m taking a writing course and I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise to me, but it’s eating into my overall writing time. I hope to be back with y’all soon, but in the meantime, enjoy some cuteness overload with my good friend Alfred, a ground squirrel who lives in the Grand Tetons.
One recommendation before I go: this week, I listened to the crossover podcast between the Living Planet (produced by Deutsche Walle, a German media organization) and NPR’s The Wild with Chris Morgan, and thought it was pretty great. I particularly loved hearing about an Australian citizen science project on frogs, called Frog ID. Using Frog ID, anyone in Australia can upload a recording of frogs to be ID’d by the scientists at the Australian Museum.
It’s like a Shazam (a music identifier), but for frogs, and using scientists instead of artificial intelligence to make the identification.
Not all of us can live in Australia, of course — it would get awfully crowded if we tried — but at least we can now hear some of the wild noises of Australian frogdom. Some of my favorites include (scroll down a little to get to the “play” button to hear the calls):
the Moaning frog
and the Northern banjo frog
Frogs in general are in real trouble (something I might write about at more length later), so I’m glad to know about efforts underway to better understand and celebrate these incredible creatures.
Cuteness Overload accepted! Have a great time "learning" to write!
Thanks Hannah! I needed a good dose of cuteness this morning. Your frog song story reminded me of visiting my grandparents when they lived in Puerto Rico. If you're going to do a deep dive into frog sounds, you must check out the Puerto Rican coqui. I remembering listening to them while falling asleep, as my grandparents had no AC and we slept with the windows open. I've never heard anything else like it.