Calling trills of the southern toad answered in more ways than one (photos, video)

BAY MINETTE, Alabama – The incessant, high-pitched trill was obvious as soon as I opened the door to my house in Bay Minette shortly after daylight Wednesday.

It took a few minutes to realize that it was a natural noise and not being made by something manmade.

Finally convinced I was hearing the calls of a hatch of 17-year cicadas as I’d witnessed back in the mid-1990s while living in northern Virginia, I grabbed my camera and headed toward the eerie sound.

The sound grew louder as I walked 50 yards downhill and neared a drainage ditch running slow with shallow water.

It hit me then that it wasn’t the freedom’s call of long-dormant locusts I heard, but was the strident hails of what I thought must be frogs.

Despite the fact the calls appeared to be coming from within yards of where I stood on the ditch’s 3-foot banks, I couldn’t make out the source amid the greenery.

Finally I saw something foreign on a moist bank sticking out into the ditch. It looked like a dark, quarter-size bubble someone had blown from gum.

Focusing my camera lens on the spot and zooming in, the bubble was revealed to be the inflated throat of a male southern toad calling for a mate. The sound was startling loud coming from such a small creature.

Once my eyes grew accustomed to finding them, it was easy to see several males sitting in what can only be described as stoic anticipation while they sang their lust-filled song.

The southern toad's range includes coastal areas as far north as extreme southeast Virginia, then broadens across the Deep South, excluding most of Louisiana and all of Texas. They are not indigenous to north Alabama. (Courtesy University of Georgia)

Others remained hidden amid the undergrowth just off the ditch and more toads seemed to be calling from a wooded lot just uphill.

Even though individual toad calls lasted for mere seconds, the sheer number of callers combined to produce a never-ending, single-note cacophony of sound.

It is a song that likely was heard across a wide swath of the Deep South considering the time of year, which produced perfect breeding conditions for amphibians of all kinds on Wednesday.

Wives tales hold that the toad’s trill is a call for rain, an old axiom that may not be far from the truth, said Roger Clay, a District V non-game biologist with Alabama’s Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division based in Spanish Fort.

“There might be something in their biology that makes it possible for them to detect oncoming low pressure associated with rain, so there may be something to that old wives tale,” Clay said.

And being amphibians, Clay said water is an absolute necessity for successful breeding. That requirement forces the toads to migrate to water, where sometimes they gather in huge mating aggregations.

There’s no way to accurately estimate the number of toads participating in this particular breeding frenzy in and adjacent to the 60-yard long, 3-foot-wide ditch near my house.

The toxin isn’t fatal, though Clay said it would be a particularly unpleasant experience for anyone or anything that tries to eat one.

The secretions are also likely the source of another wives tale that erroneously says if a toad urinates on the hand holding it, that it will develop warts.

Pairing takes place when a male toad is able to wrap its forelegs around the female’s neck. He will fertilize each of the 2,500 to 4,000 eggs as the female releases them in a long, gelatinous string, Clay said.

Each egg is dotted with a tiny black embryo.

The eggs hatch surprisingly fast – in two to four days depending on water temeprature.

Depending on the weather, Clay said it takes up to two months for the gill-breathing, algae-eating pollywogs to change into lung-breathing, insect-eating toads.

“It really is amazing how quickly that whole process takes place,” Clay said. “Considering where they breed in those shallow-water environments, they really have to hustle up and get through their life cycle.”

A second trip to the ditch about an hour after I first walked down there revealed that the males’ love calls had been answered.

The toads did not appear to be insulted by my close-up intrusion into their mating ritual, but after a few minutes, I felt it better to just leave them alone.

Entering my driveway, I felt the first rain drops of what within seconds turned into a steady downpour.

I couldn’t help but smile, knowing the toads’ song had been answered in more ways than one.