Whippoorbill's gift to us

manumuskin

Piney
Jul 20, 2003
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millville nj
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What a marvelous aural fusion of two worlds-- earth and sky; depths and heights; squatting and soaring! I love the calls of these wild creatures and this combination is especially enjoyable.

Thanks, Whip, for patient hours recording, and Al, for tramping through the goo.

Glo

No prob Glow,goo tramping is a labor of love for me.Bill has pics of me somewhere covered in goo from head to toe.i was testing it out for camo and it works pretty well.almost as well as my ghillie:)
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
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Yes.....I plan on visiting several places this year.
 

Ken Walker

New Member
Feb 9, 2013
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Woodstown, NJ
Just the thing to listen to on a cold winter's night like tonight. Thanks a lot for this, especially since it's hard to get out to the Pinelands as often as I'd like. It's like you're right in the middle of the Lake Atison.
 

Jersey Jeff

Explorer
Jun 22, 2012
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I purchased this book and CD set for my son a few years back after wondering "what was that noise?" during our camping trip to Wharton.

I've even used the wood frog call while walking around the Great Swamp NWR last March to get the wood frogs to call back to me.
 

NJChileHead

Explorer
Dec 22, 2011
831
628
Jersey Jeff, I got that one too. It's a lot of fun to put it into practice!

Whipporbill, thank you so much for these recordings. I love the sounds of these frogs at night, and as Ken Walker said, if I close my eyes, I feel like I'm deep in the pines.
 

whippoorbill

Explorer
Jul 29, 2003
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Bridgeton
A program called framework radio ( http://www.frameworkradio.net/ ) recharged my interest in field recording ... reopened my ears to the sounds around me ... which led me back to this thread, where a few field recordings are archived. I just re-listened to these Wharton State Forest (and a few other areas in SJ) recordings and, to be honest, I'd forgotten what we had here. Or maybe I was too busy collecting sounds back in the day to fully appreciate these. I'm not sounding a siren, but what strikes me the most here results from listening to the recording Guy offers in the first post of this thread; those little ponds near Friendship don't sound like that any more ... in recent years I've not heard as many Pine Barrens tree frogs here ... and no carpenters, no Fowler's, maybe a single leopard. Sure, these frogs and toads are elsewhere in the pines, but even the carpenter frogs in a nearby bog were, once upon a time, deafening due to their quantity. Now the choir, its chorus softer and admittedly more pleasant, is small. I wonder what has caused the changes. I wonder where the trend might lead. I wonder if recordings like these, someday, might be all we have.
 
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manumuskin

Piney
Jul 20, 2003
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millville nj
www.youtube.com
Are these field recordings on this site? I can't get them to play on site and when I try downloading them they are not finishing.Their all over 100 megas so maybe it's just taking forever.Been waiting a half hour.
 

whippoorbill

Explorer
Jul 29, 2003
675
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Bridgeton
You're asking about the framework radio link? Not all nature recordings. Basically it airs phonography sound collages. Some of it is a bit bizarre but, remember, I'm open-minded. :)
 

Teegate

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Sep 17, 2002
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Bill,

I will be going to those ponds again this year and will see if I find the same as you. I was surprised and concerned when I read your post.
 
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NJChileHead

Explorer
Dec 22, 2011
831
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A program called framework radio ( http://www.frameworkradio.net/ ) recharged my interest in field recording ... reopened my ears to the sounds around me ... which led me back to this thread, where a few field recordings are archived. I just re-listened to these Wharton State Forest (and a few other areas in SJ) recordings and, to be honest, I'd forgotten what we had here. Or maybe I was too busy collecting sounds back in the day to fully appreciate these. I'm not sounding a siren, but what strikes me the most here results from listening to the recording Guy offers in the first post of this thread; those little ponds near Friendship don't sound like that any more ... in recent years I've not heard as many Pine Barrens tree frogs here ... and no carpenters, no Fowler's, maybe a single leopard. Sure, these frogs and toads are elsewhere in the pines, but even the carpenter frogs in a nearby bog were, once upon a time, deafening due to their quantity. Now the choir, its chorus softer and admittedly more pleasant, is small. I wonder what has caused the changes. I wonder where the trend might lead. I wonder if recordings like these, someday, might be all we have.

I've been doing a lot of reading recently about worldwide amphibian declines. It seems that these guys are facing a multitude of natural and man-made threats. Among the natural threats are ranavirus and the widespread chytrid fungus, as well as another, emerging strain of chytrid.
I recently read a report about certain amphibians, such as the red-backed salamander, having a bacterium in their skin that helps give them immunity against chytrid. It closed with some discussion of theoretically inoculating populations of amphibians with the bacterium.

The man-made threats are manifold. The closing chapter of the book 'A Natural History of Amphibians' by Stebbins and Cohen discusses how the decrease of amphibians is the first indicator of a seriously threatened ecosystem, and they tie a lot of those threats to humans. According to this book as well as other articles, acid deposition, increased heavy metal concentrations in the water and soil, and even more sinister threats such as endocrine-disrupting toxins and estrogen-mimicking pesticides have already begun to interfere with the reproductive and immunological systems of herpetofauna and humans alike.

I wonder if we visited the same bogs a few times under optimal conditions, such as high humidity, just before or after a rainstorm, and at the peak time of breeding activity, how close we could get to that recording that you mentioned. I suppose that it's wishful thinking on my part that we could still get close, and that the subsequent visits by others to that location were times when the calling activity was lower because of the timing or other factors such as low humidity, etc. If the population densities of the frog species are really declining in the bogs, I think that it could potentially be a sad indicator of declining water quality. If this is the case, it could spell trouble for more than just the frogs. I hope that this is not the case.
 

Teegate

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Sep 17, 2002
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Almost all of my tree frog photo's are from May 10 to May 22. I will make sure I check the place out multiple evenings around that time to compare with how it was when I was there last.
 
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whippoorbill

Explorer
Jul 29, 2003
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Bridgeton
Thank you, guys. I haven't visited the Friendship area nearly enough to properly document populations, or calls pertaining to conditions.

The first time I visited one of the larger bogs at Friendship, melting Manumuskin was with me, the carpenter racket was unbearable. Something tells me something is up causing populations to go down. Time will tell.
 

manumuskin

Piney
Jul 20, 2003
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I think we haven't been there at the right time under exactly the same conditions and this is why we haven't been deafened.It's possible they may go through population boom and bust cycles like lemmings and we hit an explosive year that year. I haven't subscribed to "Chicken Little Syndrome" yet but I"ll keep my Eahs open.If anything manmade is causing a decline I say acid rain.Hard for me to believe it's global warming after the winter we just experienced. A natural fungus is more likely.WNS for frogs.
 

whippoorbill

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Jul 29, 2003
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Bridgeton
By the way the chorus I heard in the vernal on Silver Run Road a couple nights ago was I think louder then any I have ever heard there so maybe we're in for another good year.
I don't think you and I have been to Friendship together on a frog night since the racket days.

I'm there a few times a season, usually solo, and the score isn't even comparable, for whatever the reason. Weird, I just had an exchange with a Lines of the Pines attendee and the same exact bog clamor-reduction issue was brought up at the event during a personal conversation. Like Mark said, it would be interesting to know why.
 
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manumuskin

Piney
Jul 20, 2003
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millville nj
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I would check the census reports on Ancestry.frog. Seriously I"d put money on the fungus.Acid rain has bee around awhile and I think Pine barren frogs are no doubt impervious to a little bit of acid considering the PH of most Barrens waters.Is this fungus visible to the nekked eye? Hand lens? If it's a fungus the frogs that survive will be naturally selected "Super Frogs"! Resistant to the fungus as well as their young or we could see a general frog extinction.A world without bats and frogs...we're in big trouble.We better start figuring out how to cook and eat mosquitoes.
 
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