Rain + warmth = Pseudacris crucifer. The spring peeper.

Spring? Seriously? Appearing for one night only at a backyard pond in Tennessee. Tomorrow: the freeze returns.

They are calling at an ear-ringing 85+ decibels. These frogs are so loud that birds have to adjust their songs near chorusing peepers. So crank this one to 11:

Zoom in on the spectrogram (below) and we can see two call types: short upward sweeps and longer trilling sweeps. The short, untrilled sounds are the males calling to females; the zipped calls are aggressive signals to other males. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. You can clearly hear each call type on the recording, minus Armstrong’s horn.

Bonus: how many peppers can you spot in the photo below?