And no, I’m not referring to human women either.
Over the last week I was fortunate to go frog monitoring with Eva Ford at the four best frogging sites that Eva conducts from monitoring at. I haven’t been back to these four sites since last February during the intense wet season we experienced through most of Queensland. At that time the frogs were everywhere so it was going to be interesting to see how the sites had changed in the last 5 months with extremely little rainfall.
Belli and Cedar Creeks were not flowing. In fact, only a few medium sized pools remained. During our monitoring there we only came across a Mixophyes fasciolatus (Great Barred Frog) and heard another species or so. I was still hopeful we’d have better luck at the remaining two sites – Six Mile and Cooroora Creeks.
And indeed we did and better than I’d hoped! At Six Mile Creek we found two M. iteratus (Giant Barred frogs) – both large females and possibly holding some eggs. We also heard a male M. iteratus calling, but it didn’t sound like he was trying too hard to impress the ladies.
After searching almost all the transect at Cooroora Creek I heard an Adelotus brevis (Tusked Frog) calling from a large remnant pool. This site was the driest Eva had seen it in 7 years of frog monitoring there. We heard a stray Litoria fallax (Eastern Sedgefrog) and a Lit. peronii (Emerald-Spotted Treefrog) and saw several Rhinella marina (Cane toads) – but the best was yet to come! I turned my head and spotted two beautiful M. iteratus females perched on some logs.
We also found three male M. iteratus and a smaller female.
Overall, we were stoked! It was particularly encouraging to find so many large, healthy females out, hence ‘Girls Night Out’. It is great to know these endangered frogs are still present there despite the absence of rainfall.