Females hop to marshes, swamps and ditches along creeks and streams to lay small, loose clusters of eggs on stems or other material in shallow water. The inch-long frog, tan on the back with yellow undersides, has three brown stripes on his back and a more distinct dark brown or black stripe on each side, running from nostril through eye to groin. The leopard tree frog adds his courting calls to wet nights in winter and early spring. Varying from rich green to brown, the spotted frog has particularly long legs and uses them to keep on the move around ponds, ditches, swamps, even the margins of lakes and streams. Wary males cluck for mates with a series of three to five guttural croaks followed by two or three clucks that sound like someone's rubbing an inflated balloon.
Frogs have a body temperature that's near that of the environment.
Enzymes are thought to affect the frog's ability to tolerate cold or heat, and frogs apparently produce a different variety of the same hot-weather enzyme when temperatures plunge. If a leopard frog were thrown into a bucket of ice water in the summer, he'd perish. But given the same ice water in winter, the frog will thoroughly enjoy his swim.