The SA Frog Census has traditionally been run each September with participants recording frog calls in their local region on cassette.  In previous years, participants have been sent a cassette tape, a datasheet and a return envelope, but this year we are moving into cyberspace.

What changes does this bring about?

It means that instead of using a cassette, you use a digital recorder to collect recordings - this may be an ipod, a voice recorder, or even a phone or camera which has sufficient sound recording quality.

It means not posting in a cassette tape to be analysed by a single person, but uploading digital recordings of calls onto the Internet to be analysed by a group of trained people.

It means not filling in a handwritten datasheet and posting that back to the office, but instead taking field notes on a field datasheet and then entering the complete dataset directly into the database.

Atlas datasheet.doc

It means you have opportunity to learn frog calls of your local region and find out how well you know them, and then be able to do the analysis of frog calls yourself.

It means that you can help us gain information about frog distributions throughout the year, enabling you to target frogs whenever they are calling, not just for one week of the year.

So hopefully you will find the changes give you more opportunity to get out there and be a friend to the frogs!

Click here for detailed instructions on how to collect recordings.

If you have a question about collecting recordings, please contact us.

If you have a question about registering, adding information to the database and using the mapping, please wait until the second stage of the website is completed and see if your question is answered then.