The Legendary Peeper !

                       The scientific name of Hyla crucifer, the tiny tree toad with the shrill, bell-toned April voice, reaches back into Greek legend. Hercules, says the legend, was fond of a boy named Hylas. While they were adventuring with the Argonauts, Hercules sent the boy to bring water from a spring; but the water nymphs captured Hylas and thereafter he lived in the water, calling for Hercules in his sweet young treble voice. ever since, that voice has been heard in swamp and bogland in the Spring of the year.

There is really nothing strange about a hyla we know except that it is a small frog with a very large voice. It Lives and grows as much as any frog, from egg to tadpole to adult frog. It hibernates, and emerges in the burgeoning Spring hungry for food and mate. It belongs to a family very old upon this earth, and in a sense it represents the very Springtime of life.

We usually call this small tree frog the Spring Peeper, but there are other common names. On Martha's Vineyard it is the pinkle-tink, and on the Cape Cod it is the pinkwink. Both names are, to a degree, imitative of the hyla's call. But no name can more than hint at a sound, which is clamorous and exultant and strangely musical and yet quite unmelodic. A chorus of Spring peepers close at hand can be a din of disorganized sound; yet from a little distance this same chorus can be pulse-lifting and rich with the warmth of Spring itself. There's nothing else quite like it. That is why we  h/b/56

 Vernal pools or seasonal wetlands, are defined as naturally occurring, seasonal bodies of water, free of predatory fish populations, that provide breeding habitat for one or more species of amphibians and salamanders, snakes and fairy shrimp. Of the 13 types of snakes in Rhode Island our pool holds three, garter, ribbon and northern water snake.
Of the 7 species of turtle in Rhode Island our pools support 3, spotted, painted and the snapper.

Spotted salamanders and red spotted newts.
The wood frog, northern spring peeper, gray tree frog, green frog, pickerel frog, American bull frog and the eastern American toad