Distribution: The Motorbike frog occurs only in south-west Western Australia.
Appearance: Motorbike frogs range in color and pattern from pale brown to bright green with irregular gold, brown or bronze spots and patches. A pale colored stripe sometimes runs along their back. Frogs can be a fairly uniform green to olive or gold color. Their bellies are light dirty brown, sometimes with dark marbling and are coarsely granular (granular in texture). Their groin, arm pits and inner and outer thighs can be black (or smoky) with yellow or white spots (groin and thighs are turquoise blue in Growling Grass Frogs and Green and Golden Bell Frogs).
Their backs are warty or ridged. The eardrum (tympanum) is distinct. Their fingers lack webbing but the toes are almost fully webbed. Toe discs are small and approximately equal in width to the digits.
Size: Adult females are typically 6-8cm and males 5-7cm.
Call: As their names suggests this frog sounds a like a motorbike changing gears, often like: Waaaaaaaa-wa-wa. Variations of this call may be heard as frog calls vary with temperature and other conditions that influence their behaviour. For example in cooler conditions their call can sound more like a Waaaaaaa-vvvv or simply vvvv.
The CAUL Urban Wildlife app lets you help to monitor and conserve native wildlife in Australian cities. You can record sightings of bell frogs, view all of your previous records, and see a map of where other citizen scientists have recorded bell frogs in your area.
Image: Motorbike frog. Credit: Jai Thomas
How you can help
- Download the CAUL Urban Wildlife app. Available on Google Play or Apple Store
- Complete a quick online training session.
- Start recording bell frogs in your area. You can record individual sightings, or undertake a two part timed search - 5 minutes of listening followed by 15 minutes of looking. The timed searches will give us important information on both the presence and absence of our target frog species.