digger, the first year or two we had a pond, we were delighted that the toads used it to spawn in. We made a floating,nursery basket to keep the toad tadpoles from being eaten by the fish and we were thrilled to see the little toad-lets eventually take off into their new world, our garden and farther afield, to feed on all the pesky insects that chew up our flowers and plants. What I did not count on was, that the following years those precious little toad-lets, now mature, would return to their Garden of Eden to beget more spawn, from which commeth more toads to beget, prosper and multiply again and again, until the noise from hundreds of them, begetting and singing their praises all night long in the spring, would have awakened the dead. I have transported gallons of spawn, heaps of tadpoles and hundreds of adult toads to a nature area near us. Where they can beget to their little heart's content and sing happily all night without bothering me or my neighbours. Toads are much hardier and are surviving at a better rate, than their cousins the frogs, in to-days poisoned environment. With the upsurge in garden water features and the protection they afford to these amphibians, toads have a greater chance of survival and multiplying. Again, like a number of other pond related subjects, it is up to the individual pond owner to decide what is in or out, what they want or don't want, in their personal little Eden's. For me a couple of toads in and around my pond, is fine, as long as they are both of the same sex. :) I don't want to go through all that noise and transporting again. "Horton"

I am just so glad to read about so many people trying very hard to maintain as much natural balance as possible. I see the awful devastation of pristine but "barren" neighborhoods like mine... with no ladybugs hummingbirds in sight and plenty of dead baby birds too... I too haven't seen toads forever! I'm sure they've been completely extinct due to the "grubkiller" poisons that all lawncare companies constantly apply as their standard package... I too put strict rules that they were never ever! to use this stuff on my lawn... Much to my horror, the lawn care people again forgot my orders... I was soooo furious! I don't trust any grubkiller, no matter how much the silly lawn proponents claim that theirs is harmless... One of their versions made my "frisbee catching in the grass" dog sick for an entire month... and she wasn't even allowed on that grass until it had a good rain on it, and still it wasn't enough...Likewise, the other grubkiller has only been tested for a year, which is stupid in my view... What they don't test for is long term exposure and health for years down the road... I never trust company so-called "testing"... Anyway, bless the toads, garden spiders, ladybugs, and patterned lizards, and everyone who has allowed them to flourish...

Egrets here mainly follow cow herds around and eat the insects in the pastures, so they don't seem to have as much impact on the frogs at our place. But, we don't have cows, so we don't have egrets on our property at all, even though they are all around us. Maybe they're eating all the frogs and toads in the cow pastures and especially around the stock tanks and I just don't know it. We do have a lot of great blue herons that stand right in or near the ponds and eat frogs, toads, fish, etc. They probably get more of our frogs and toads than any other type of predator does. I haven't noticed snakes eating frogs here either, but that doesn't mean they aren't doing it. Most of the time the snakes here head right for the chicken coop hoping to get eggs, or a baby chick. Snakes are not especially picky and also like field mice and such, but our cats take care of those and don't leave them for the snakes. In some dry years (or just when spring is very dry) you don't see many frog or toad eggs and won't have many babies in the spring, and we might have a significantly lower population that year. However, they always seem to rebound in the next rainy spring. River, when you mentioned millions of toads on the dirt roads, that reminded me of another wild critter that seems to be in trouble here---tarantulas. When we first bought this land in 1997, we had tarantulas everywhere--and not just on our land. You'd see them in the road a lot, in parking lots, yards, etc. For several years---maybe from about 2004-2008, I didn't see many at all. They were very scarce. This year, I saw quite a few at one point, but they still aren't common on the roadways like they once were. I suspect all these wild creatures go up and down in population numbers and it likely is related to the predator-prey relationship. We see that here with coyotes and cottontail rabbits--when the population of one is up, the other is down. One odd thing we've had lately is large turtles digging holes in our lawn and laying their eggs there. In the past, they laid their eggs on the edge of the woodland, where the woodland meets the pastures. Of course, raccoons and other predators usually dig up those eggs and eat them. So, maybe the move to our lawn is an effort to find a place where the raccoons aren't looking for eggs. I don't know that it works since the raccoons prowl all over the place though. If they can't find food, the raccoons even come and look into the windows and sometimes tap on the glass to get our attention. I wonder if they're expecting us to feed them? (We don't feed them and we don't feed our pets outdoors, so they're out of luck.)

It seems dunks aren't entirely safe for birds. I put a very small crumb of a donut into my fantail pigeon's bird bath to keep the mosquitos from breeding while we were on vacation. My son called us while we were in California to say the birds were dying. When we got home 8 out of our 12 pigeons were dead. Our birds also had pigeon waterers to drink from so guess not all of them drank the birdbath water. Mosquitos never get into the waterers, but I had to empty out the birdbaths every few days because of wiggletails in them. I've kept pigeons for almost 30 years and never had anything like this happen. Thought of writing to the company that makes them to inquire to see if pigeons were particularly sensitive to them, but never did. Glad to hear that apparently the amphibians are doing okay with mosquito dunks, just thought I'd pass this along.