I went to Brecksville Station today and think that I will do more recordings from this area.

I heard an owl calling from a stand of pines that you can listen to here on the Voices in the Valley YouTube channel. The call is very soft and wearing headphones is the best way to hear it. I’m still going to record along the towpath between Brecksville Station and Vaughn Road because different areas and environments have different groups calling. The season should be interesting because of the lack of snow means that much less water is available to fill the vernal pools. Right now this pond is covered with a thin layer of ice, but all of the snow from earlier in the week has melted away. This location should be good because it is more or less a permanent body of water, much like some of the canal ponds. I think some areas are fed by underground springs due to their permanence, while others are fed by run off or the Cuyahoga overflowing it’s banks. I’ve noticed that the ones fed by runoff or overflow have less stable chorus activity and the permanent ponds don’t generally have much activity until later in the spring. That being said, each area has it’s own variance in geography etc… so areas within a large pond will have activity not found elsewhere. The early spring frogs like Spring Peepers, Chorus Frogs and Wood frogs will call from the more shallow, less permanent, vegetation filled areas, and the larger Bullfrogs and Green Frogs call from the more permanent deeper areas. This pond is kept full by beaver activity. Right along the Northern edge, the culvert built to drain overflow and protect the train tracks from washouts has a dam built around it. That is the source of the running water which can be heard in the recording.