Spring Peepers and Autumn Pipers. An audio podcast celebrating the calling behavior of Spring Peepers, Pseudacris crucifer. © Lang Elliott, 2016. Featuring recording made by the author. Please play at a low volume to simulate a natural listening experience.
Click Here for direct link to MP3.
Hi all! Here is a brand new podcast prototype … Spring Peepers and Autumn Pipers … a 13-minute celebration of the calling behavior of the Spring Peeper, Pseudacris crucifer, but with a fun little twist. This is the second in a series of podcast experiments that will help me home-in on a suitable style of presentation.
Hope you like it! My voice is a little rough (a result of my throat cancer treatment), but it seems workable. Rough but lower in pitch, and perhaps a little warmer than my previous sound. This might actually be a good thing.
As always, I’d love to hear your reaction, especially with regard to the overall feel of the podcast. It is topic oriented, so there’s lots of information being presented. Nonetheless, I’m hoping it will be perceived as friendly, accessible, artful, and just plain fun.
So what’ya think? Please join in the conversation below!
Below is a photo of the habitat around Ladyslipper Pond near Ithaca, New York. This is the site where I recorded most of my examples of autumn calling:
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Thanks Lang for confirming this. I live in the Chippewa National Forest in MN and these guys are calling all over in the tops of trees during late Summer, early Fall. I haven’t found much documentation that they climb this high in the trees, but this seems fairly common. I’m a bird biologist and knew they weren’t birds. I thought they sounded like peepers. Glad to know this is correct.
Really enjoyed this! I currently am caring for Freddie, a fall piper who came in on some plants.
Is Freddie doing any indoor piping?
We have been startled recently, late evenings around bedtime, hearing an abrupt chirping. It sounds like it is coming from inside the house, in the living room and Ive been looking about in case there was a stowaway hiding in some plants I brought in from outdoors. Haven’t seen anything yet, so hopefully its coming from outside the front door! My son thought it was a fox, my husband thought it was a bird. I was thinking a frog yet have never heard one in the fall. Just searched online to hear autumn sounds of frogs and found this There… Read more »
Linda: Where is it that you live?
Maryland- we are fortunate to live in a wooded suburban area between Baltimore and Washington DC where in addition to traffic noise, we regularly see and hear wildlife. I know many of their sounds well, but the autumn piper chirp is a first!
Glad to hear that you were able to ID the sound! Lots of people hear it, thinking it’s some kind of bird.
Fascinating. More please. Because I just had my 4th surgery for what started out as a tumor on the base of my tongue, I would be interested in learning more about your throat cancer. My treatment has taken place at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, which is an amazing facility.
Love it, really enjoyed this. Would love to hear more of these!
Lang,
I so enjoyed this recording! I always get joyful when I hear my first peepers of the spring. <3 I plan on using this podcast and others in my classroom and my environmental club.I have several of your CDs, including Loon Lake. Thank you for your amazingly passionate work!
Love hearing this in January, spring won’t be far off. Will keep you in my prayers for God’s healing.
Yep … SPRING is just around the corner!
Excellent production! Thanks for providing us with this unique offering.
Thanks Eileen!
Lang,
What a great format. I love the educational components of this recording and the context placed around the nature sounds
Mike: My comment notification system has not been working correctly and I just now discovered your comment. Glad to hear you like the format!
Lang, sorry to hear of your throat cancer – will put you in my prayer.
Appreciate your wonderful delightful sharings.
just another little bump in the road …
I so enjoyed this pleasurable recording! Lovely soundscapes and interesting information, made for a nice reflection on the beauty of autumn. Thank you for sharing! And…as always, my dog and children love these recordings!
If dogs and cats and children love my recordings, then that’s really saying something!
Thank you! This short little Autumn call has confused me for years.
you and many others, I’m sure!
Lang,
Thank you for the beautiful melodies. As winter approaches, I long for the spring songs of the peepers!
My daughter’s birthday is the first day of spring so we always have a dual celebration!
I’ll have to see if I can recognize their aggression call next spring.
Thanks so much for a piece of spring!
Spring is just around the corner! Will be here before you know it! Sometimes I wish there were more months in the winter in order to get work done, but winter flies by quickly in my world; there’s scarcely enough time to get organized for spring! Next year I hope to be on the road for an extended recording (and real-time podcasting) journey, primarily focused on western regions (especially the Southwest). I’m already in the planning stage.
I’ve never heard your former voice. I love the warmth of your current voice, and I’m sure it will keep changing for a while. I love your podcast, both soothing and informative. You bring to mind the duality of nature: spring versus fall, bogs versus boughs, warmth versus coolness, ……
“bogs and boughs” … I like that!
A jewel!
As always an enjoyable listen and informative recording. Thank you Hamilton Gibson and to you Lang for enhancing life through nature.
: >)
Cool, I never knew that that was an aggression call 🙂
yes … the autumn piping fools a lot of people, especially beginner birders.
I think this is the first year where I have heard the autumnal piping. glad to know I wasn’t imagining it 🙂
While I occasionally hear the piping in mid-summer, the bulk of it happens from late August through early October, at least here in upstate New York. I’m heading into the woods tomorrow to try for some additional parabolic closeups (it’s expected to reach 62F), though I’m not sure they will still be calling (although they were a week ago, during a 70F day).
What a great podcast! I started listening to you as a teen with a Birdsong Tutor. This podcast reminds me of those favorite recordings. Can’t wait to share this and future episodes with my niece and nephew. Thanks!
Wow … you had my Birdsong Tutor … that harks way back to the very beginning of my adventures recording bird song. And you’re correct, podcasting is reviving some of my early efforts, and providing a new network of distribution. My very first production was called “At Play in Nature’s Sounds,” which was a recounting of my first recording expedition in 1988. It was never published as a product, but rather was shared with friends. Now I can publish such things much more easily and share to a much larger audience, at least potentially.
This was lovely. Thank you.
I love peepers, both in the spring and then later in the season when they return from the ponds to the woods, especially after a rain, or when it’s damp out. Someday I’ll have to replace my audiotape version of your “The Calls of Frogs and Toads” with a digital version. It was much used and allowed me to identify various calls I’ve heard here on Cape Cod. By the way, I once had a peeper stuck in a spider web inside my house, and I have no idea how it got in. It was quite tricky to get the… Read more »
Terry: you might consider obtaining a copy of my book “The Frogs and Toads of North America.” It comes with a CD that has much better recordings overall than the ones featured in my earlier production, “The Calls of Frogs and Toads.”
Thanks!
I love the depth and breadth of the listening experience you offer us with the new podcast prototype. Just perfect for sharing with a young granddaughter who is a budding naturalist! Many thanks!!
Kay
I definitely want my podcasts to be enjoyed by our youth … especially the new crop of “budding naturalists,” a critically important demographic group that we should all do our best to nurture and cultivate! Furthermore, they are precisely the ones who will rise up to champion our little Autumn Pipers in the decades to come, as we of the “old guard” fall prey to the ravages of time.