European tree frog (Hyla arborea) taken in Limburg, Belgium. Photo by Bart Heirweg.

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This Photo of the Day was donated by a participant in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. See more photos or sign up for the 42nd Annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

Red-spotted newts are aquatic as larvae and adults, but they spend their juvenile years on land in a stage known as "red eft", characterized by their fiery orange or red coloring. This red eft was crawling through a garden in New York while the photographer was weeding. Photo by Lynn Cleveland.

Create Wildlife Habitat At Home

In just a few easy steps, you can turn your backyard, balcony or patch of grass into a habitat for wildlife.
Start gardening for wildlife >>

This Photo of the Day was donated by a participant in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. See more photos or sign up for the 42nd Annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

Here you can see him talking to the group about an amphibian house that they have created. It is a simple design where they have buried a door in the soil and covered it with leaf litter to create great habitat for our reptile and amphibian neighbors.

You can create wildlife habitat like this as well! In a few simple steps you too can enjoy wildlife like frogs and lizards right in your backyard!

Want to know more? The National Wildlife Federation has tons of ideas to help you bring wildlife to your backyard!

Frogs could be the first victims of rising temperatures. (Courtesy of Flickr's James Lee)

In a recent study, scientists have examined the effects of climate change on amphibians and what climate change could bring for small animals. As temperatures rise, animals of all sizes need ongoing protection. We can help by becoming “climate-smart.”

How Will Frogs Fare?

Due to their sensitivity to temperature change, scientists found that amphibians were the perfect test subjects. They found that if unpredictable changes in temperature were to occur, amphibians may not be able to escape quickly enough due to their small size. This is enough to threaten many salamanders, frogs and newts, who could find themselves stuck in unfavorable conditions along their travels.

But physical barriers and limitations are not the most pressing issues for amphibians. They are most threatened by wavering and unpredictable temperatures, causing extreme temperature shifts which amphibians may not be able to deal with. Butterflies, reptiles, plants and other species face the same problems, in addition to battling habitat destruction and diseases.

The Times Are a Changin’

Other effects of climate change on animals in the news recently:

• Warmer temperatures mean smaller animals. According to the “temperate-size rule,” many animals’ sizes shrink as the planet’s temperatures rise, and most cold-blooded animals are particularly affected. For example, Copepods (tiny crustaceans known as plankton) mature faster but also grow slower in warmer temperatures, so their growth is stunted. Ultimately, this affects plankton-eaters, such as baleen whales, who may become stunted as well.
• Scientists in Fort Worth, TX, have rescued thousands of smalleye and sharpnose shiners from the Brazos River, the only place in the world where they are found. The small fish became trapped in the upper parts of the Brazos when the river dried up due to the 11-month drought caused by record-setting temperatures.
• The National Marine Fisheries Services will decide in mid-April whether 82 coral species will be listed as endangered or threatened. Of the 82, nine are found in Hawaii, and one species, ringed rice coral, is only found in Hawaii. Coral reefs are facing extinction due to overfishing, pollution, global warning and ocean acidification, all of which also threaten coral reef inhabitants.

What We Can Do

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and in a complex ecosystem, even the smallest animals playin important role. As conservationists, we also have important jobs, and we must continue to support endangered animals and be aware of ways we can reduce our carbon footprint. Join us in our fight and help our ongoing efforts!

This is a sister post to “Fantastic Wildlife and Nature iPhone Apps,” and, while you’ll notice a few repeats, I decided to extend the mentions to a few new ones! I’ve linked mostly to the iPhone applications, but most of them have an Android counterpart.

Mobile Apps to Help You Find Parks and Trails

Sometimes, in order to see wildlife and feel close to nature, you have to find it, so that’s what these applications help you do.

NatureFind
Price: Free
Find the closest parks, forests and nature centers with this application. It also will tell you local events that the places are hosting. This application is incredibly useful regardless if you’re in a city or surrounded by suburban houses. (Available only on iPhone)

Trailhead by The North Face
Price: Free
This application uses your current location to tell you the nearest hiking trails. You can find out information about each trail, including their length, story, pictures and tips. Use it when traveling to discover local trails you haven’t explored. (Available only on iPhone)

Trails – GPS Tracker
Price: $3.99
This application is helpful for anyone looking to explore new trails and track the pace, ascent and descent. It’s a useful application for tracking your tracks.

Other Hiking and Trail Apps to Check Out:

• Backpacker GPS for iPhone and Android
  Price: Lite is free, Upgrade is $9.99
• Trail Maps by Nat Geo:
  Price: $2.99

Wildlife Sightings and Citizen Science

WildObs Observer
iPhone and Android
Price: Free

When it comes to wildlife observations, there are several useful apps and WildObs is one of my favorites. It makes it very easy for you to report your sightings and identify species, and your observations show up on National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Watch website. It’s one of the only apps that allows you to report sightings without having a photo and it also tags your location if you so desire.

Sci.Spy
Price: Free
A fantastic wildlife photography and observation application. If you witness anything from people in the garden or on a trail you can snap a picture of it and share it on this helpful application. You can either partake in a mission or share your experiences for fun.

Project Noah
iPhone and Android
Price: Free
Check-in to nature with this nature observation application. With your photos you can help accomplish missions and explore other sightings. Project Noah allows you to upload flora and fauna, and once you’ve created an account you can meet other nature enthusiasts as well.

iNaturalist
Price: Free
Here’s another easy to use application that lets you log your wildlife sightings. This application does not require a photo and it gives you ample room for notes. It also automatically fills in the date and your location to help make your observation recording easier.

Wildlife Reference

Audubon Nature Applications
Apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android
Price: Each is $9.99

When it comes to reference guides, Audubon has a slew of useful applications to help you identify specific flora and fauna. They all average about the same cost and have a great number of resources. I’ve listed a few of the applications below so you can get a sense of the way they break them down (both regionally and by type).

If you’re looking for a digital field guide, these are definitely a worthy option.

• Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch
• Field Guides for the iPad
• Field Guides for the Android

MyNature Tracks
iPhone and Android
Price: $6.99

Need help identifying animal tracks or scat? This app has a number of animal tracks, scat and sound information that can come in handy when you’re exploring the great outdoors. Keep in mind, it helps to measure the length of the track when it comes time to identify! MyNature also offers several other great applications like MyNature Tree Guide and even park specific apps. Check them out if you are planning on visiting a specific area, like the Grand Canyon for regional identification help.

Bird-Specific Applications

BirdsEye
iPhone and Android
Price: Full is $19.99, Lite is $1.99
While I have not tried this one out personally, I’ve read a few reviews that make this a promising application. You can track your bird sightings as well as see local bird observations.

WildLab
This application is part of a citizen science project that I thought was too neat to pass up. It’s technically for the NYC area and has been used by schools and organizations in that area since 2009. It’s definitely worth checking out!

Various iBird Applications
iPhone and Android
Price ranging from Free to $19.99
As an owner of iBird Pro and Backyard, I’ve found them to be very comprehensive. They give you range, locations, both an illustration and actually submitted photos of the animal. The apps will also include the call of the particular bird.

It’s a very useful application and testing out one of them is a great way to start your own birding adventure.

• iBird Pro
• iBird Plus
• iBird Regional
• iBird Lite

Peterson Field Guide
Price: $14.99
This beautifully done birding application has a unique way to identify the birds you’ve seen and you can also log your sightings here as well. It’s incredibly easy to move through the application and offers some real images of the species.

Other Birding Applications to Check Out:

• National Geographic Handheld Birds: Price $9.99
• Sibley eGuide to Birds: Price $29.99

If you’re looking to compare birding application, iBird.com has a useful chart, and there’s a great review of birding applications here as well.

Apps to Help with Plant Identification

Leaf Snap
Price: Free
A joint project by Columbia University, University of Maryland and Smithsonian Institution is helping people identify plants with a photo. Leafsnap uses facial recognition software for trees–all you need is a leaf and a white background and this application should be able to help you. The app currently covers trees of the Northeast and Washington, DC.

Florafolio
Price: $3.99
This app offers an interactive field guide to native plants of North America. This edition focuses on the stunning variety of trees, shrubs, perennials, ferns, vines, and grasses that are indigenous to Eastern Canada and Northeastern United States. Florafolio is the perfect guide for anyone who wants to identify species in the wild or garden with native plants.

TreeBook
Price: Free
TreeBook has 100 of the most common trees in North America as a helpful resource guide. It’s a great way to start learning how to identify trees as a beginner and isn’t so large it takes up too much space on your phone. I’ve found it very useful!

As someone who is fascinated with the natural world, I’ll keep checking out applications. I’d love to hear what applications you use in the comment section below! Even if they are from different countries, or if I missed them, I’ll keep updating this post so that it can be a helpful resource!

Now go out, explore, take photos and mark your observations!

All this changed last year when my coworker Danielle Brigida alerted me that there were green tree frogs hanging out back behind our office building in Reston, VA. Intrigued, I grabbed my other coworker, Max Greenberg, to help me investigate.

That first day, we counted 11 green tree frogs. I know this because we wrote it down – the first entry in our frog watch. For the rest of the summer, Max and I would head outside on Monday afternoons to count the frogs behind our building. While at first I enjoyed the game of it, I eventually came to really care about those frogs. Today, as Max and I start up the second year of our frog watch, I’m happy to say I’m a true frog fan.

As such, I want to help spread the word about this year’s Save the Frogs Day. Thought up by members of the scientific community, Save the Frogs Day encourages the appreciation and celebration of amphibians by people from all walks of life.

Why Save the Frogs? Because they are disappearing!

Frog populations have been declining worldwide at unprecedented rates, and nearly one-third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction. Up to 200 species have completely disappeared since 1980.

Here are ways you can help:

Educate Yourself: Find out what the 10 most threatened frogs in the United States are and read why frogs are so important to the Earth’s ecosystems and to humans.

Tell a Friend: I would have missed out on the wild and wonderful world of frogs if it was not for Danielle. If you are someone who is passionate about frogs, grab a friend and tell them (or show them!) why they should care. Check out these other tips for how to spread the word about the Save the Frogs Day.

Rally for Frogs: Events and rallies are taking place across the country tomorrow. Find one near you and speak up for frog conservation.

Build a Frog Pond: Ranger Rick has a great tutorial on this easy way to attract amphibians to your backyard. A great activity to do with your kids.

Also, be sure to check out the Save the Frogs Facebook fan page and use the hashtag #SaveTheFrogs to join the conversation on Twitter.

A concerned reader writes: “I hear that April is National Frog Month, so I would like to know, how do I tell whether I am a frog?  And if I am one, can I get some sort of government benefits during National Frog Month?” (signed) Ambivalent Amphibian, living in the Land of Whimsy (The Land of Whimsy lies precisely on the US/Canadian border; nearly 3,000 miles long, it is nothing wide, making it hard to visit unless you book a flight of the imagination). To these questions I respond:

Dear Ambivalent Amphibian:
 

A bullfrog in a wetland. The bullfrog is the largest frog in North America, weighing up to a pound.

If you are a frog you get government benefits year round through programs that protect wetlands and other places frogs can’t live without.  If you are especially rare, you might get benefits from the Endangered Species Act. You can also get benefits from private efforts, such as protected areas provided by people who sign up for NWF’s Backyard Habitat program and offer living space for frogs. 
 
To get these benefits you must first, as you wisely suggest, establish if you are a frog. Frogs do differ widely from other animals. Here are six ways to tell if you are a frog:

1. Do friends often call you a toad? If you answer yes, then you may be a frog. Frogs and toads belong to a group scientists call Anurans (meaning, “without tails”), and there is no real difference, scientifically speaking, between frogs and toads. Basically, toads are frogs that may spend most of their time on dry land. As a result, they tend to have drier skin than more water-oriented frog species and their skin is likely to be rougher, which helps camouflage them in the knobby world of dirt, sand and leaf litter. So if you look like a toad, there is a good chance you are a frog.
2. Do you have four legs? Frogs are four-legged creatures. They also may have webbed feet, a trait especially common in water-loving frogs, or they may have little round pads at the tips of their toes with skin especially designed for climbing, a useful trait for frogs that live in trees. Regardless of your feet, if you look like a toad and have four legs, you may be a frog.
3. Are your hind legs built for leaping? Frogs typically have long hind legs with extra joints, unknown in mammals, that help frogs leap usually far. Muscles in the hind legs are long and powerful, especially those used for jumping—the muscles used to get legs back into place after a leap are much smaller and weaker. How good are frogs at jumping? Well, the best is probably the Australian rocket frog, which can jump 50 times its body length—covering more than 6 feet of ground. This leap would be like a 6-foot tall man jumping the length of a football field. If you look like a toad, have four legs, and your hind legs are built for jumping, you may be a frog.
4. When you were young, did you have a tail and gills and live in water?  If so, you may have been a tadpole, sometimes called pollywogs. Tadpoles have gills and have long tails that help them swim with speed and agility. Most eat nothing but algae and other small plants, but some may eat insects and their young. They hatch from soft, shell-less eggs that their mothers lay in ponds or in the quiet pools of streams. Mothers may lay their eggs at the end of winter, when the water is still cold and therefore holds more oxygen than it will later in the year when temperatures rise. Not all frogs lay eggs in water, though. Some frogs carry their eggs on their backs, or in their mouths, or even keep their babies in their stomachs until they are ready to enter the world. But most frogs start out as eggs in water and hatch into tadpoles. Then, in one 24-hour period, the tadpole changes into a frog—its eyes move to the top of its head, its gills disappear, its legs show up and its body shortens. If you look like a toad and have four legs, the hind ones designed for leaping, and you were once a tadpole, you are very likely to be a frog.
5. Do you eat mostly or entirely meat? Most adult frogs eat only insects, worms, and, sometimes—if the frog is large—small mammals and even baby water birds, such as ducklings. The biggest frog of all is West Africa’s Goliath frog, which can weigh more than 6 and1/2 pounds—the size of a small house cat. The largest U.S. frog is the bullfrog, which can reach a full pound. The important point here is, do you eat only or mostly other animals? If you look like a toad and have four legs, the hind ones designed for leaping, and you were once a tadpole, and you eat mostly or only other animals, you are almost certainly a frog.
6. Can you breathe through your skin? All but one of the 5,000 known frog species have lungs for breathing on land, but they also can breathe through their skin when in water. However, frogs don’t have the ribs and muscles that help birds and mammals to breathe. Frogs breathe by puffing out the throat and squeezing the floor of the mouth, so when you watch a frog breathe, you will see its throat moving. Do your chin and throat move when you breathe, and can you breathe through your skin? Then, if you also look like a toad and have four legs, the hind ones designed for leaping, and you were once a tadpole, and you eat mostly or only other animals, I would say, yes, you are a frog.

Finally, let’s look at some things that don’t rule out the possibility that you are a frog. If you live in trees, you may still be a frog, because many frogs, especially in the tropics, live and even breed in trees. If you are poisonous, like certain plants, you still may be a frog—many frog species secrete skin chemicals poisonous to mammals, birds and other creatures that may feed on them, including humans. Some South American Indian people use the skin secretions of certain frogs to poison the tips of hunting darts. You do not even have to be green to be a frog (though if you live in a pond full of green plants, being green may help you hide from prey and enemies).  Some frogs are bright red or blue or yellow—often these bright frogs are poisonous, and their color warns predators away from them. 

So that’s it.  If you do turn out to be a frog, have a happy National Frog Month and learn more about frogs at: 

Living  with Frogs

“Want to Host a Garden Party for Frogs?”

“How to Dote on Toads”

Attracting frogs 

Fun with Frogs

Tree frog game 

Frog Facts

About frogs