Toads, Eggs and "Toadpoles"* (video)

Pairs of American Toads surrounded by Toad Eggs, 4/6/2021


The photo above, taken on April 6th, was part of the mayhem of that day when the water in the area of the cattails was crowded with American toads -- males singing their hearts out and pushing each other around and pairs producing eggs such as in the photo above (if you haven't seen the video in the "American Toads Rule!" post, it gives an idea of the craziness of that day). Click to view the photo larger -- toad eggs show in the photo as long strings of green with little black dots lined up throughout. Estimates I’ve seen of eggs produced by a single female toad range from 2000 to 20,000. This, as you might imagine since the world is not totally overrun by American toads, is indicative of the rough life ahead for the offspring. They end up providing food for a lot of other creatures despite their defensive strategies and characteristics.

The adult toad presence has been significantly subdued since April 6th.Three days later, on April 9th, I was back and heard sporadic calls from a number of species, but only one lonely toad trilling a couple of times, like a poor guy who had missed his bus and arrived late for the party. On the 10th I came back in the evening to listen after sunset and still almost no toad calls already. Theirs was an explosive event. Almost everyone was there apparently just over a few days and then dissipated back to the woods and meadows they had come from. This actually correlates well with my frog call monitoring experience at the wetland back in 2019 as well. I visited the wetland every week for the months of March, April and May after sunset to listen for frogs and toads. On April 8th of that year I had a large chorus of American toads and heard one two weeks later and that was it.

Meanwhile, however, those long strings of eggs have not wasted any time. When I returned on April 9th this year intending to get better photos of the egg strands, they were hardly to be found. Instead, the shallow water surrounding the cattails was filled with very tiny black tadpoles. The eggs had hatched already. On the 9th I did not see the tadpoles swimming very much -- mostly just clinging to algae or other plants. It was a different story, however, when I came back on the 14th. The little toad tadpoles were much more active, as you can see in the 30-second video below (best viewed full-screen!).

Video Notes:
  • What you are seeing in this video is probably only a couple square feet maybe 8" deep. The tadpoles are not this thick over the whole pond, but certainly over much of the shallow area surrounding the cattails.
  • At about 15 seconds into the video you can see toward the bottom of the screen a long, light-colored wriggly type thing swim across the screen from left to right. This is a damselfly naiad -- an immature damselfly. Flimsy as it may look, it is a predator and likely quite happy with the abundance of small toad tadpoles.  We'll have a post on damselflies in the near future.
  • About 23 seconds into the video there are a couple of very light-colored tadpoles that swim from left to right and come to rest in a bunch of algae. I don't know if those are unusually colored toad tadpoles or a different species in the mix.
  • Feel free to post any questions in the comments below!


For a brief article with lots of other interesting information on American toads (although it continues to use an outdated scientific name— the accepted name now is Anaxyrus americanus), see 



* "Toadpoles" is not an official term, but cutely describes tadpoles that turn into toads.  

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