This, the chocolate treefrog, is one that we eagerly seek but seldom see.
Knock- knock- knock- knock.
Hmmmm, I wonder?
Again the knocking but this time I was bit closer. The sound came from a few feet into the rainforest to the left of the slippery, very muddy trail. I had a pretty good idea what was calling but had to be sure. Checking to make sure I wouldn’t be walking into some “monkey-get-back-bush” or brushing against a tree bustling with bullet ants, I moved from the trail, over numbers of small fallen trees, into the brushy forest.
By then, what had been a steady but gentle rainfall suddenly decided to become a more typical, ferocious Amazonian downpour. With the increase in rainfall came a corresponding increase in the knock-knock calls.
It doesn’t do much good to wear rain gear in the Amazon. Within seconds a raincoat becomes a sweatcoat and boots are soon wetter inside than out. The most prudent thing is to simple get soaked by the almost body temperature rain and drip dry between showers while you walk along. And so I stood amidst the knocking calls, dripping and looking but not drying.
Finally one of the calls came from almost overhead. Looking upward about 4’ over my head I noticed a knothole in a small tree. And from the knothole again came the call—but 4 feet above my head on a rain-slicked tree was, for an old guy, shall we just say, well out of reach.
Improvisation was necessary. The fallen tree trunks came to mind. Would they stack and could I stack them high and securely enough to reach into that knothole? Yes, yes, and yes.
And within a few minutes I had a knock-knock critter in hand. As suspected it was a frog, a hylid frog, and a pretty one at that. With a milk chocolate dorsum and legs and dark chocolate sides, belly, and eyes, I had in hand a Nyctimantis rugiceps, a chocolate or brown-eyed treefrog!
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