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Mink Frog

Rana septentrionalis Baird

Mink Frogs are generally green to brown, often spotted or mottled. Their preferred habitat is quiet waters with lots of plants like lily pads and pickerel weed.

The height of the breeding season is in July. Males take their place at suitable spawning sites among the surface vegetation and begin calling a mate. The male calls day and night with a repeated "cut - cut-cut" sound. When a number of frogs are vocal it sounds like a couple of carpenters nailing shingles on a house somewhere in the distance. Females produce about 1,000 eggs each year. The tadpoles overwinter and transform the next July and August.

Mink Frogs are very timid. Some careful sneaking is required to get close to one. Usually all you see is the water surface breaking in a number of places as they skid off vegetation and hide underneath. The best time to watch them is at night, because they tend to stay still while a flashlight beam is on them.

Mink Frogs eat a variety of land and water creatures, particularly ants, beetles, bugs, moth larvae, spiders and flies.

When picked up, they emit a smell like a mink (or rotting onions, if you can't quite recall the odour of mink).

Additional Facts and Details

The family Ranidae of typical frogs consists of 45 genera and 586 species and is distributed nearly worldwide.

The genus Rana is represented in the Maritimes by 6 species in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while 3 occur on Prince Edward Island.

The toes on the front legs are unwebbed.

Breeding males can be told from females by the swollen base of the thumbs on the forelegs. This is related to the tight holding they do during amplexus.

There are regional colour variations. In about half the population at Uniacke Lake, Hants County, the back is green, bronze and black. Black dominates the pattern on many of them. One individual had a green head, black back and a large bronze blotch on each side.

Size: body length of 43 newly transformed young ranged from 2.8 to 4.2 cm. Adult males, 17 measured, from 4.9 to 6.8 cm. Adult females, 12 measured, 5.4 to 7.0 cm.

The dorsolateral fold may be absent or may extend up to two-thirds the length of the trunk. The folds are less prominent than on Green Frogs.

Distribution in Canada: Nova Scotia and New Brunswick north to Anticosti Island and southern Labrador, west to south-eastern Manitoba. In the United States, south into northwest Maine and New York, and west to northwestern Minnesota.

In Nova Scotia, Mink Frogs have been found in scattered localities throughout most of the mainland and Cape Breton Island.

Earliest spring record is May 7, 1968, a juvenile male at Kejimkujik Lake in Queens County.

Latest fall record is September 30, 1924, at Cheticamp Lake in Victoria County.