A Noisy Little Fellow

A couple of years ago I was tricked by the call of the Common Nursery Frog, Cophixalus ornatus, It sounded much like a cricket and I spent a lot of time looking for the wrong perpetrator.

It took ages to locate the caller because it was well concealed and highly ventriloquial. The frog was hiding in the base of a bromeliad and it emerged, ever so slightly, on wet nights to produce its song. The calling song is very distinctive and can be heard at the link. Most people who live in the Kuranda area are familiar with this call but few have identified its source.

The frog seems very small in comparison with the intensity of the sound it produces being 25 mm in body length. These frogs are a bit peculiar in that they lay eggs in moist leaf litter and the tadpoles develop wholly in the egg with a tiny froglet eventually emerging. The feed on small insects.