Volunteers Take Part In Annual Rouge Event

Froggie love calls mean its time to count

Janet Bernadino listens for various types of frogs along Johnson's Creek as part of a Rouge River frog survey. Volunteers such as Bernadino learn the calls of Michigan's 11 native frog species so that they can help count each year. The annual count tells organizers about the health of various parts of the river basin.

NEWS PHOTO LON HORWEDEL

Volunteers take part in annual Rouge event

By MARILYN TRUMPER-SAMRA
NEWS SPECIAL WRITER

SALEM TOWNSHIP - On warm days - when the sun's rays start heating up pond, river and lake waters and surrounding grasses and bogs - the chirping of spring peepers rises and falls with a buzzing resonance that throbs like the hum of electricity.

Love is in the air for Michigan's 11 species of frogs and two types of toads, and that's good news for the Friends of the Rouge, a nonprofit group that for the past four years has used tapes and workshops to train hundreds of volunteers to discern from amid the cacophony individual mating calls and log them from March through July. So far, volunteers have learned to identify eight distinct calls.

Their results give an indication of how the frog and toad population is shaping up or failing, and this year's results are mixed, depending on what part of the river system is being documented, according to Sally Petrella, public involvement coordinator for Friends of the Rouge.

“We have lots of reports of most species, and from the headwaters we're getting really good reports - Salem, Superior, the Bloomfields, Southfield even, but in other areas they’re hearing little to nothing - or just toads,” she said.

The Rouge River watershed area is large, 126 miles long and 467 miles square. It begins in the Rochester Hills area in Oakland County and winds its way south and west into Salem and Superior townships in eastern Washtenaw, then through Western Wayne County southward, into Belleville, VanBuren and Sumpter and eastward through Wayne County and into the Downriver area. Volunteers listen all along the way.

Along portions of Hines Drive in Wayne County, a manmade floodplain often closed after a heavy rain, it's unusual to hear a frog these days. “It washes everything away,” Petrella said. “It's not looking good. I'm getting calls more and more from people who say ‘I can't count this area that I counted last year,’ because there's a strip mall or a parking lot where the frogs used to be.”

Janet Bernadino lives on about four acres on the north side of Five Mile Road east of Curtis in rural Salem Township, in a hidden and heavily wooded development of a handful of homes. The land is striped by Johnson Creek, a part of the Rouge system, which nourishes healthy bogs and lush wetlands just a short walk down the road.

Bemadino's been a part of the frog and toad count from the beginning, faithfully logging the sounds she hears rising out of the cattails, tall grasses and sparkling water. Her enthusiasm matches a kid on an Easter Egg hunt.

The wood frog is heard only in early spring, and sounds like a duck quacking.

The chorus frog has a short, ascending trill-like “cr-e-e-e,” resembling a thumb drawn along the teeth of a comb and repeated every couple of seconds.

The spring peeper is common, widespread and emits a short, loud, high-pitched peep repeated every second. It sounds like “purrreeek” and usually rises in pitch at the end. How to discern one from the other?

Just listen, say those who've been trained. It takes practice, patience and commitment.

It's a bit chilly this spring afternoon. The sun is out for the first time all day and one frog is starting to heat up, offering a feeble chirp that goes unanswered. A redtailed hawk flies overhead, clutching a snake in its talons.

A foot-long brown snake floats in the cool shadows of water flowing through a culvert under the private drive. The snails are coming out of winter slumber.

The Childs family of Plymouth - Katie, 11, Kelly, 8, Kristen, 6, and Evan, 4 - have been trained to listen for the frogs. Bernadino neighbors Andrea Mroz, 11 and her brother Mark, 9, call this place home.

Johnson Creek is their playground, the cleanest water in the Rouge River system, the only live trout stream in the Rouge River system and one of only three trout streams in all of southeastern Michigan.

Maria Zimmerman, a graduate student in aquatic ecology at the University of Michigan, leads the team of kids, answers questions and listens.

But today there are few frogs. While the area is ripe with all kinds of life, it's the sun that brings more of them out as frogs take on the surrounding temperature.

Bernadino first got involved because she was curious about her surroundings. “I wanted to know what was out there. I started out wanting to learn about it and what I got was a complex education. The fact that we have eight separate species of frogs means we have the cleanest water in the Rouge, and when I stop hearing eight species, I’ll know development has made an impact on the quality of water.”