Seething with toads

The American toad, Bufo americanus, is one of the most familiar amphibians throughout eastern North America. It's the only toad species found in most of eastern Canada. When I was growing up, we always had a fat resident toad under our back porch light, where insects frequented. Sometimes we would find one of them in the process of being swallowed by a fox snake. We liked the big snakes, too, but Mother (never completely at peace with certain realities of life) would try to rescue these toads. They were inevitably stunned, helpless, and resigned to their fates. If we allowed them to meet their demise, they would invariably be replaced by young up-and-comers.

Adults and tadpoles secrete a mild poison rendering them unpalatable to most predators. Apparently snakes don't care.

I never encountered the breeding behaviour of toads until I moved here. One balmy May evening I strolled to the park. In the darkness there I encountered a disturbing phenomenon. The dry leaves in the woods were rustling with hopping bodies of thousands of toads. They converged on the Eramosa River, where an eerie orchestra of high-pitched trills arose. It was deafening. Approaching the riverbank, I found the water seething with mating bodies. They had emerged from the city to turn the shallows dark with cold, amphibious lust and lay their eggs.

Within less than two weeks, the pond was black with wriggling tadpoles, hundreds of thousands of them. I let the girls bring home a jarful. I don't remember what we fed them, but tadpoles will subsist on algae or boiled lettuce. They are also true omnivores and will resort to cannibalism under duress. That was undoubtedly the case, because our tadpole population diminished without evidence of carcasses.

It's possible to raise toads in captivity, but I made the girls release them. By this time, the tadpoles had all sprouted two to four limbs. We took the jar to the cottage and freed them beside our dock. The tadpoles immediately swam to a rotten log on the shoreline and started hauling themselves out of the water. They were no larger than my fingernail, but already ready to become toadlets. Toads metamorphose to their terrestrial form at a smaller size than any other amphibian. Within a few days, the fry would look like this little guy, scarcely one centimetre long.

They're a familiar sight this time of year along cottage roads and pathways. This one had more of a cinnamon colour than the others we saw last weekend.

My dungeon

( Finally I succomb to the meme )

Finally, bugs

This will be my final post about the cottage, at least until next visit, just to spotlight three photogenic arthropods we encountered over the weekend. And what fun I'm having with the macro function on the Canon PowerShot A620.

Is it just my imagination, or are butterflies particularly numerous this year? Last year I heard tales about the disappearance of monarchs since frost killed them in their Mexican wintering grounds, but this season they appear in abundance practically everywhere I see wildflowers. And never before have I seen Limenitis arthemis, the white admiral in the second photo, in such great numbers. By the dozens they sun on the cottage road, flutter over back country meadows near Meaford, or sip nectar in a forest clearing at Little Tract. Besides the question marks I've already photographyed, many other species, more demure, keep eluding my lens: fabulous fritillaries, dark wood nymphs, lovely hairstreaks and tiny blues. They all seem to abound as never before.

Meanwhile frogs, more homely but just as beloved, are unquestionably declining, not only in journal reports but in my own awareness. For the first summer in memory, no bullfrog calls at night from the shore of our cottage bay.

What does it all mean? Whatever humanity's impact upon this tender planet, nature is never predictable. Some things wax, others wane. Everything changes. It's hubris to suppose we can manage it. One thing is certain, there will always be beauty, even if we don't survive to appreciate it.





( and a black caterpillar, Persian perhaps )

I leave early tomorrow to take Brenna home, then djjo and I are escaping from things for the weekend. I'll be back home and in touch on Monday.

Music out of place

My upstairs neighbour only ever watches action movies, the kind where everyone gets blown to bits. As I was passing his door just now, I heard a familiar orchestral strain, and paused, enthralled. It was Wagner's magical prelude to Das Rheingold, a simple rising liquid motif, incessantly repeating and gathering strength like sunlight on the waters of the Rhein. I'm not a particular fan of Wagner, but love the orchestral interludes from The Ring of the Nibelung ("Ride of the Valkyries" being the most famous). This prelude is generally not performed apart from the whole bombastic opera. I stood transfixed in the dark hallway as the episode approached its climax, but instead it died away, giving away to inane dialogue, breaking the spell.

In other musical trivia, this afternoon I heard a choral ensemble performing "I wanna hold your hand" in German, in the style of the father of Lieder. It was awfully convincing, right down to the puttering piano accompaniment. Come to think of it, didn't Schubert really write that? After 500 songs, it's hard to keep them all straight.