In Broome it doesn't rain for months at a time but when it does it comes down hard it comes down fast and with it come the frogs!
Green tree frogs are always found around here, it's not even uncommon to find them in sinks and toilets. But boy do they love it when it rains. Shortly after the rain stopped the chorus's began. The consistent croaking of hundreds of happy little green tree frogs.
Cute little fella mid croak
Since it was dark we could only see the ones around us but we watched them happily hopping through the wet trees and plants, climbing and hunting bugs.
We walked through the garden looking for the rest and found them hidden all over, I think we found around 20 frogs just in our small area of garden but you could hear hundreds from the surrounding properties and bush next door.
We found a number of them sitting around a small pond in the yard and 2 of them appeared to be attempting to mate. They aren't very timid and can easily be picked up and handled, though they are prone to jump out of your hand and onto the ground or your shirt. You do need to be careful when handling frogs as they breathe through their skin and can absorb chemicals easily because of this. It is best to wash your hands with soap and then rinse thoroughly with clean water before handling them.
Aside from the calls of the green tree frogs you could also hear the occasional cute little unk noise. We had no idea what it was as the geckos here make funny noises too. After investigating where the noise was coming from we came across this funny little guy.
Ornate burrowing frog. Have a video of his funny noises but aren't set up to upload and link it here
This is an ornate burrowing frog and are rarely seen. They only come out after heavy rains and are a reasonably small frog. This cute little one was sitting in the pond calling out for a mate and we have a great video of him doing his little unk.
We did need to post him on a frog ID page to confirm what he was, there is no shortage of amphibians here and identifying them can be somewhat of a specialist job. Some species are very distinct but others can look very similar and some are even confused for invasive species like cane toads. This puts them in danger from humans who actively kill most cane toads they find and unfortunately this leads to some native frogs being misidentified and killed as well.
Couple more green tree frogs hanging together
This little fella digs holes in the ground and spends most of their time hidden away only coming out after the rain like I said earlier. A few hours after we found him the sound stopped and we haven't seen him again even though more rain has come through.
We are really hoping to take our travels a bit slower and I plan on building a website with information relating to Australian reptiles and amphibians. Me and Lydia enjoy nothing more than hunting for cute and interesting critters to photograph and see, with her photos, my writing and our combined knowledge I think we could put together a pretty good catalog of Aussie animals.
We leave Broome in 8 days and hopefully we can spot some more awesome animals before we go.