If you hear a steady, high-pitched trill on summer’s hot, muggy nights, you’ll know an American toad is nearby, hanging out in gardens and window wells or beneath plants.
This time of year, you might also come across a roadway, sidewalk or lawn where hundreds of tiny toads are making their way to drier landscapes. Females can lay up to 20,000 eggs in freshwater wetlands in the spring, and those become tadpoles in early summer.
Tadpoles usually have legs and are ready for land and life as toadlets by late July. They can be as small as a centimeter or half-inch when they transition.
Besides adding to the summer evening soundtrack, toads serve a vital role in pest control, eating mosquitoes, ants, slugs, spiders and beetles. Toads, in turn, become prey to hawks, herons, raccoons, and hognose and garter snakes. As self-defense, a toad may inflate itself to look larger or secrete bitter-tasting bufotoxin from glands that look like kidney-shaped warts on the back of their heads.
An adult and juvenile American toad. (Lisa Meyers McClintick/Lisa Meyers McClintick)
Most Minnesota toads are American, although residents closer to the western prairie might see Great Plains or Canadian toads. All have a wartier skin than frogs, with earth tones of tan, olive and rust that help it blend into soil and brush.
A robust toad population indicates a healthy environment, as they’re sensitive to pollutants. If you want to attract more to your property, avoid pesticides, plant native plants to attract the insects they need and leave a small brush pile, a small log, stacked rocks or tipped-over clay pot that provides shade, shelter from weather and protection from predators.
Other than breeding season when they move to wetlands to lay eggs, most toads stay put in a preferred spot.
Lisa Meyers McClintick has freelanced for the Minnesota Star Tribune since 2001 and volunteers as a Minnesota Master Naturalist.