Southern Leopard Frogs in our retention pond

When I let our dog out to pee last night, I heard the strangest chorus emanating from the pond at the intersection of Centerpointe Drive and West Walker.  It was so distinctive that my husband and I decided to bail out of the house for a walk at 10:00 p.m. to investigate further.  This is what we recorded:

Here's what one of these little amphibious dudes looks and sounds like up close:

I've heard various species of frogs dominating the retention chorus at various times over the past two years, but I've never heard this one before now. 

It sure was a pain to track him down.  The United States Geological Survey (USGS) maintains a call database of frogs that are found in Texas:

Screengrabbed from this website.

There are a lot of different species of frogs found in Texas:

Holy cow!

I went alphabetically, so I basically sat here and spooled up the sounds of about 43 different species before I hit upon what appears to be the correct one:  the Southern Leopard Frog.  

It's amazing to me that they can so obviously flourish in what were designed to be (and which usually become) dry-bottom retention ponds.  But it's been a good year for rain, and rain is what frogs need to thrive.

Screengrab from the site for MD6282, which is the weather station operating from inside Centerpointe.  According to this site, we've received 49.78 inches of rain so far in 2012, and we still have one quarter of the year to go.  Contrast that with the 31.08 inches we received in all of 2011, which was the Year from Hell.