Frogs have porous skin, and like all amphibians, they're extremely sensitive environmental indicators. As with songbirds, the best time to hear toads and frogs is during the breeding season when males are trying to attract females to a breeding site, be it pond, ditch or backwater slough. Powers said the wet weather this spring has made the frogs around her place especially active. On a recent afternoon, while sitting beneath an oak tree in her front yard, she stopped in mid-sentence to tell a visitor that the throaty trill that had just emanated from the nearby woods was in fact a gray tree frog, not songbird. Their call is so melodic.
Powers is a firm believer in biological pest control.
She said her guinea fowl keep the tick population down, and she puts pieces of bark and pottery around her garden to provide cover for American and Fowler's toads, which also help control the insect population. It is not a private communication.