Call of the Pinkletink Is a Welcome Chorus After a Tough Winter

It is officially spring — at least as far as the pinkletink is concerned.

Gail Barmakian called the Vineyard Gazette Monday afternoon to report hearing pinkletinks at Farm Pond, near her house in Oak Bluffs.

The tiny woodland frogs — about the size of a quarter — are responsible for the high-pitched peeping that marks warmer temperatures and melting snow.

Their Latin name, pseudacris crucifer, can reveal a lot, said Luanne Johnson, director of BiodiversityWorks. Crucifer means cross, referring to the brown X on the frogs’ backs. Pseudo means false in Latin, and cris denotes cricket or locust.

“So ‘false locusts’ from their call,” said Ms. Johnson. “Their call can fake you out. You might think that it’s an insect calling instead of a frog, it’s so high pitched.”

But not a seasoned Vineyarder, many of whom have been calling into the Gazette for over a century to report the first peeps of spring.

Pinkletinks usually emerge when temperatures hit 55 degrees, often around the spring equinox. They lay eggs in temporary or vernal pools and woodland depressions that fill with snow melt and rainwater, and are heated by the UV rays through the leafless trees of early spring. By the time the pools dry up in the summer, tadpoles have developed into mature frogs and can move to the woodland leaf litter, feeding on mosquitoes, gnats and ants.

Unlike fish-filled ponds, vernal pools have few predators, creating an advantageous place for laying eggs.

The species also has the advantage of food and space that comes with being the first to emerge from hibernation, made possible due to its ability to withstand the cold.

The frogs survive the winter by releasing extra glucose into their bloodstream. Acting as a cryoprotectant or “antifreeze,” the excess glucose allows the frogs to survive up to five days at freezing temperatures, with up to 35 per cent of their body water frozen as ice.

“With each peep they hear, Islanders are reminded that they too have survived another winter, if only barely, and without the aid of antifreeze blood,” wrote Peter Brannen in a 2011 edition of the Gazette.

Once the frogs have thawed, it’s time for them to breed, and that means noise. The louder the male’s call, the more attractive it is to a female, said Ms. Johnson.

“If you walk up near a wetland within a minute in the spring, it’s deafening,” she said.

The frog is called a “spring peeper” in much of its eastern American and Canadian habitat. Where the Vineyard’s unique “pinkletink” name comes from is anybody’s guess, although many Vineyarders suppose it’s an onomatopoetic reenactment of the call.

Visitors to the Island have occasionally written to the Gazette asking editors to identify the sound and to explain the term “pinkletink.” In a 1964 edition of the Gazette, an editor’s note explained the “Vineyard’s onomatopoetic name dates from centuries ago.”

Over the years, contributors to the newspaper have constructed meditations, essays and poems about the tiny frog, at times rhyming “pinkle” with “tinkle” and “tink” with “think.”

However the name first came to be, the mating call of the pinkletink remains a classic reminder that another Vineyard spring is here.

“Those Pinkletinks!” read one letter in a 1959 edition of the Gazette. “It’s hard to keep them off the front page.”

This article appears in March 13, 2026.