Talking to my family about listening to frog calls and keeping an eye out for different frogs in the suburbs, my aunty recorded a large frog she found in her garden a few weeks back in Macquariefields.

She  put the frog into a plastic tub she was growing her water lillies in and recorded two short videos on her phone. Sometimes in the afternoon she would hear it making a call like someone ‘knocking on a piece of wood.’ She hadn’t heard the calls recently, but when she showed me the tub, we found lots of new tadpoles.

I emailed Dr John Gould who confirmed that the frog that my aunty had recorded was a Striped Marsh Frog Limnodynastes peronii, a very common species that can be found along the eatern seaboard, northern Tasmania and around Perth. These frogs are relatively hardy and can tolerate contaminated waterways and will readily colonise suburban ponds, and disused pools. Their tadpoles look dark brown or black and take 7-8 moths to mature. My aunty will have to keep topping up the plastic tub until April-May next year to try to keep them alive.

Her neighbours and friends had also advised her not to replace the stagnant water, or remove the water lillies or clean out the tub as frogs usually prefer it you just regularly top up the water level even if it looks dirty. She has a rain water tank that she uses to top up the tub rather than tap water. I was very surprised her friends and community – who often don’t speak much English – are actively knowledgeable and concerned about sharing and improvising with these makeshift interventions to accomodate these frogs.  

Looking around at the dirty tub filled with tadpoles, I noticed how she was growing Rice Paddy Herbs, doing cuttings of Pothos, orchids and Kaffir Limes as well. It seems that this random assortment of Asian herbs, citrus trees and ornamental plants are coexisting with local frogs. Maybe you don’t need completely intact or undisturbed landscapes within the sprawling suburbs to have a rich communities of plants, animals and people.