March is toad mating season. Seeing as it was warm (which is when they are most active), mummy and I took our cameras down to the pond to learn about the toads.
They are much braver than normal when they are mating, so we expected it to be fairly easy to get a good look at them. However, we underestimated how brave they would be and ended up having to be extremely carefully not to stand on them!
We crouched down carefully in the shallow water and remained still. After less than a minute, the toads started re-appearing. Before long, there were toads all around us. They seemed to be attracted to mummy’s bright red underwater camera. We think the lens appears like a mirror when underwater so the toads see another toad.
The toads were very easy to pick up, if we just put our hands under the water, often a toad would swim over and climb on and wrap it’s legs around our fingers. A couple even started to climb up my arm!
We noticed there were big groups of toads all holding on very tightly together forming a big ball. Mummy explained that the larger toad at the bottom was a female and all the others were males trying to mate with her.
We also saw a few newts and leeches, mummy recorded a short video of them which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wniwiQrta74
Toads look quite different when they are underwater, they look like they have thin bellies, but when they are out of the water they look like they have chubby bellies. We think this is due to the pressure of the water pushing the flabby bits in.
I was surprised by how well camouflaged they were against the bottom of the steam. I was also surprised by how different they look, the colours and sizes really vary.
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