Toads, for me, are like the perennial underdog, the bad news bears of the amphibian world. They're goofy and clumsy on land, often tumbling down rocks or embankments as they pronk around. Much of Burlington is on sandy deltaic sediments from the Champlain Sea. It drains well and there are scant wetlands, save along the Winooski River, flood zones along the lake, or retention ponds built to handle run off. I live near the latter most habitat and from my windows can hear toads trilling on the first warm (50+ degree) nights of spring. After 8 years of seeing toads in my garden and wishing they had a breeding habitat, I finally got around to building a pond. I got toad eggs and raised them to mature tadpoles before releasing them into the pond. After about 2 days of filling the pond with water we already had a couple of competing males trilling away.
I've been seeing more and more toadlets (tiny, ~1/2") popping around, so looks like my first parenting project was a success! But not all is well in the land of toads. Today while out at Derf Beach (Fred's Beach to many, at the north end of North Beach), I was pulling poison ivy when all of a sudden I was spooked by a strange two-headed, two-legged beast. I yelled and jumped simultaneously. And then I realized what I was looking at!
Oh, that leg. Not sure how the snake got both legs into its mouth. But it did.
A yellow jacket showed up and curiously buzzed around the toad for a while
Eventually the snake wormed its way backward and over the green ash roots. Perhaps in response to us, trying to covet its meal. Each animal seemed to move in bursts followed by small movements trying to gain leverage.
Oh, how my heart went out to that poor toad. And what a beast of a toad, easily one of the largest toads I've ever seen. We surmised that it was puffing out its chest to make it difficult for the garter snake to swallow it any further. We watched the struggle unfold for about 10 minutes before we had to leave. Perhaps the most striking realization that I had was that toads don't have facial expressions, a simple observation but so dramatic when I realized that this toad was having perhaps the most dramatic and terrifying experience of its life and it's face was totally stoic, or rather unchanged. As we were leaving someone called us back for the culmination of the struggle. The snake had decided it had bit off more than it could chew and released the toad from its grasp. A sad day for snake enthusiasts, a great day for toad-a-philes, and a fascinating, but morally neutral day for ecologists :)
What: I can now hear the chorus of American toads (Anaxyrus americanus) in the retention pond under the power lines in Centennial Woods, which is about .2 miles from my house. There are fewer gray treefrogs this year, but the trade off is a solitary spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) and a solitary bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeiana (you can barely hear the bullfrog around 55 seconds in to the video), both are firsts for me in the last 4 years of monitoring amphibians in Centennial Woods. The wood frogs are no longer making any noises.
Ecological notes: Toads sing when the temps get around 60 degrees or higher. The recent rains seems to have brought out more of them. If these temps keep up, we should start seeing some fireflies in the near future! I was also surprised to see a beaver swimming around in the retention pond. I haven't seen them this far from Centennial Brook before. This one slapped its tail at me three times indicating that it might be an different beaver than the three that live in the brook that know me much better.
Where: Centennial Woods power line retention pond
Other notes: The taxonomic groups of bullfrogs, spring peepers and toads have recently been changed. When a species gets moved to another genus it keeps its specific epithet (the second part of the latin binomial). The former names for the three are Rana catesbeiana,Hyla crucifer and Bufo americanus, the bold parts changed, the non-bold parts remain the same by convention. I personally prefer the old names for reasons outlined quite well in this article on the taxonomy of treefrogs: Pseudacris vs Hyla
What: Both toads and wood frogs "singing" today in Centennial Woods. The wood frog eggs that I've been watching for the past few weeks hatched about 10 days ago and I was able to grab a few photos of the tadpoles today. They seemed to be congregating at a log near the surface of the water possibly for warmth.
Ecological notes: I first noticed the eggs on March 25th, so it took about 23 days for the eggs to hatch.
Where: I noted in my last post on the eggs that the beavers had flooded the area, raising the water table, and creating this little standing pool. The beavers had moved upstream few weeks ago and haven't worked on their lower dam. If they do decide to work on the dam and raise it about 4" it will raise the water enough to connect this pool to the brook and the fish will probably wipe out the tadpoles.
.JPG "Wood frog")
.JPG "Wood frog tadpoles")