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New Zealand’s native frogs are found in humid, but not watery, environments. Streams little larger than ditches meandered across the area, and the quartz was supposed to be most easily found in and along the edges of these watercourses. We were searching for fragments of translucent orange-brown quartz (carnelian) on flat alluvial ground under a canopy of teatree and ferns. It was in the late 1960s, when our family went on a rockhounding trip into a remote section of the Coromandel Peninsula north of Tapu. I first came across native frogs by accident. They are also protected by law, which means that they are not to be interfered with, handled or taken into captivity. The native frogs are small (adults are 35-45 mm in body length), camouflaged to near invisibility, restricted in distribution and uncommon even within their range. Despite this denial, Maori do have a traditional word for frog: pepeke. When goldminers near Coromandel discovered one in 1852, local Maori claimed never to have seen anything like it before, and suggested it was the spirit of the gold come to Earth. Indeed, even Maori seem not to have been overly familiar with them. This character is small-no more than 40 mm in body length, compared with 85 mm for the bell frogs-and ranges in colour from buff to brown.Īs well as these immigrants, New Zealand has its own indigenous frog fauna: four living species described so far, with a further three subfossil species which have become extinct in the 2000 or so years that kiore, the Polynesian rat, have been here.įew New Zealanders can claim to have seen a native frog. In the south, a third Australian species is common: the whistling tree frog. They were introduced from Australia in the middle of last century, and are actually two very similar species: the green and golden bell frog, Litoria aurea, which is found only in the northern half of the North Island, and the southern bell frog, Litoria raniformis, which, despite its name, is found throughout the country. The frogs that are most familiar to us-those with green and gold livery-are no more native to New Zealand than we are ourselves. Could the same phenomenon be happening here? Will the croaking chorus of frogs by the bach water tank, or show-and-tell tadpoles in Agee jars on school window-sills, become images of New Zealand past? Reports from around the world suggest that once abundant frog species have been vanishing. It had been a dry year, to be sure, but the previous summer had been wet, and the frogs were just as scarce. The frog just annihilated was only the third I had seen this summer. Now the chirps of crickets, hoots of moreporks and occasional coughs and squeals of possums are the main sounds to ruffle the quietness of the dark.
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Out in the farmland where I live, a decade ago the WOOOG, woog wog wog of frogs was chief among the noises of the summer night, and encountering up to half a dozen frogs taking their chances on the road was not unusual. In our century, frogs have endeared themselves to us in the form of the froggie who went a’courtin’, Burl Ives’ little green frog on his lily pad, and, of course, Kermit-Muppet extraordinaire, cultural ambassador and, recently, presidential candidate. In fairy-tale times, kind princesses regularly kissed frogs and were rewarded by the amphibian metamorphosing into a handsome prince beneath their lips.
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They don’t move fast enough to frighten us, and their big eyes, lugubrious mouths and “hands” give them a benevolent-even humanoid-appearance. Though they have a somewhat alien aspect to them, they are much more endearing than, say, a rat or a spider. I was sorry about the demise of the frog. “Couldn’t you have swerved or something?” I plaintively asked my daughter, a newly fledged driver. I winced as it went under the car, and imagined the squelch.
#Let loose the frogs of war full#
The pale, slender shape was at full stretch half a metre above the rough gravel, bravely leaping towards some destination it would never reach. The car’s headlights swung over the knob and down into the hollow of the road, catching the frog in mid-jump. Although air-breathers (like all adult frogs), they seem most at home immersed in water with only eyes, nostrils and ears (visible below and behind the eye) monitoring the terrestrial world above. New Zealand’s commonest frogs are the green and golden bell frog (below) and the very similar southern bell frog, both introduced from Australia around 1870. Written by Warren Judd Photographed by Michael Schneider, Brian Chudleigh, Darryl Torckler and Robin Bush