Build it and they will come

Ok, so everyone who has been here before knows that a couple of months back I built an amphibian pond sort of on a whim (translation: mrs cohutt didn’t know about it until it was installed. oops).

The idea was to make an interesting and attractive addition to the garden scheme that was functional as well. Functional means providing water for wildlife and increasing the biodiversity in the area, mainly to attract beneficial insect, birds and amphibians.

Bottom line I had slugs and earwigs overtaking the garden and needed some help in the form of toads, the nocturnal rulers of the garden and supremely effective predators, especially for slugs and snails.

We have been experiencing an unusually early and long hot dry stretch here so I figured my pond would be even more attractive to toads should any be in the area. Back on May 19th I sent a text inside to mrs cohutt @ dusk saying saying that I was pretty sure I heard toads courting from a distance, one to the north and one to the south of my property.

But alas, not a bit of action in the pond (the baby tree frogs were the result of tadpoles rescued from a friend’s pool cover) and I hadn’t heard the toads “bleating” again since then. I have a neon “open” sign flashing over my perfect pond and nearby “toad houses”, so I wonder: Are the local toads just as illiterate as the average local homo sapien?

So last Tuesday night we had a 30 minute storm around 10:30 that dumped about an inch of much needed rain on us. Wednesday morning I went out to pick some berries for breakfast and did a quick walk through of the rest of the garden and was stunned to see this in the pond:

Hallelujah.

These are definitely toad egg strings, as most other amphibians that would be in this area have eggs that clump into large masses (these pictures don’t show the strings very well but they are there.

When I was confirming the eggs’ ID I also discovered that toads typically only breed the nights after decent rains.

Well duh.

It makes sense that they are hardwired for this since it improves the chances of water being around long enough for the eggs to go full cycle into frogs. The “dry pond” egg layers have long ago been thinned out of the gene pool.

So the two courting toads probably converged on my property on the night I heard them or shortly thereafter and were just waiting for nature’s signal to “get it on”. Wednesday evening after dark they were calling to each other again in very short bleats, so they are still here. And since a female toad can lay hundreds of thousands of eggs in a season (May – August here), I’ll probably be seeing a LOT more eggs in the future.

And a lot less slugs.

Go team!