Eastern Spadefoot

Description: Eastern spadefoot toads have smooth skin and scattered, tiny warts. Ground color light brown to yellowish, mottled with dark brown, the mottling sometimes forming indistinct brown dorsal stripes. The only NY/PA anuran with verticle pupils. They have a black, keratinous spade-like spur on the "ankle" of each hind foot.

Eggs: Spadefoot eggs are small, dark and deposited in strings underwater attached to a twig, leaf or other type of vegetation.

Distribution: Restricted to areas with loose, sandy soils including Long Island and several locations in the Hudson Valley of NY.

Habitat: Most abundant in open fields with loose, sandy soil. Occasionally in wooded areas.

Ecology: Highly fossorial and rarely seen above ground except in breeding congregations, but will emerge to feed at night, especially when humid or rainy. Can bury themselves quickly rear end first by digging into the soil with the spades on their hind feet. Eat mostly arthropods and worms. Breeding occurs anytime from April through August, but is sporadic and highly correlated with intense rainstorms. Eggs are laid in short strands attached to submerged vegetation in shallow, ephemeral pools, ditches, and flooded fields, and hatch in only one or two days. Tadpoles transform in less than three weeks.

Reproduction: Spadefoot toads are "explosive breeders," This is usually a one-night occurence, although the toads can breed several times at the same site from April to July. Breeding is triggered by a quick drop in barometric pressure, more than 2 inches of rainfall and darkness.

Voice: A loud, frenzied series of nasal grunts described as ?wank, wank, wank?.