American Green Tree Frog

Welcome to this week’s Wildlife of the Week!

Our species this week is the American Green Tree Frog!

Hyla cinerea

This week’s Wildlife of the Week is the American Green Tree Frog. This is a small frog measuring up to two inches in length. They have smooth skin and are green with pale yellow to white undersides and white stripes on their sides. Their greenish color can change depending on temperature and light. Their long limbs and sticky toe pads allow them to easily climb vertical surfaces. For that reason, they can often be spotted clinging to windows and doors around houses, especially around lights that attract insects. As their name suggests, they live in arboreal canopies where they hunt for insects, including mosquitoes, ants, crickets, beetles, and flies. Consider yourself fortunate to have them around your house and yard; they will help keep insect populations under control.

They can often be found around ponds, marshes, and streams during mating season, where they breed and lay their eggs. Male frogs have a large vocal sac and call during the mating season, which runs from April to October, to attract mates. Their call is a clear bell-like sound that can be repeated every second. Mating urgency seems to increase during rainy weather and wetland areas can be a cacophony of mating calls. The female, which is slightly larger than the male, lays a clutch of eggs that average 400 or so. Eggs take from four to fourteen days to hatch and the resulting tadpoles take eight to sixteen weeks to reach full maturity. Their range includes most of Alabama except for the northeastern area.

Green tree frogs can often be spotted resting in crevices around structures during the day. The frog in the picture was perched on a window frame at the Visitor Center.

(Photo by Tom Ress)