some general questions about american toads in the wild

[UncleChester]

- are toads usually this predictable? is this unusual, or have others observed similar behavior?

Yes. They are very predictable. Last summer we had a big fat female American Toad that would return to the same potted hosta plant every day for a few weeks. She literally had thousands of other potted plants to chose from, but every day could be found in the exact same pot. I've seen this preference for a nice location many times before, and in other species (especially Hyla versicolor).

- are they territorial? and if so, what is the usual size of their territory?

Males are territorial in the breeding pond, or at least chase each other away by trying to breed with anything that moves, male, female, toad, frog, fish, logs,your foot, etc. Outside breeding season I don't think I've ever seen any interact so I'm not really sure where they stand on territoriality. Here's an interesting paper where they tracked the dispersal of a few adult females. They found them to wander pretty decent distances, but would also spend several days confined to very small ranges. They also talk about attaching spools of thread to some of the toads to better understand small distances traveled, and sometimes found the same toad in the exact same burrow the next day with a bunch of thread pulled out.

http://pages.towson.edu/forester/Res...0dispersal.pdf

- was his overnight guest a challenger? did our guy (we've named him 'toby') make a meal of his guest?

I've never seen an American Toad try to eat another American Toad, but that's not to say it's impossible. I've mostly seen them go after relatively small insects and not so much large or even medium sized prey, so I don't really expect them to be cannibalistic and haven't been able to find much on their cannibalistic practices (outside of the tadpole stage). The regular frog cannibals that I've seen (like Rana clamitans) seem to regularly try to cram the largest prey items possible down their throats.

- at what point in the season do they hibernate? we're assuming that he'll head down the hill towards the pond, and find some nice soft earth to dig himself in for the winter. his current dwelling, a space about 1' x 1' x 3" is concrete, and won't provide any insulation during the cold months. and it will be snowed under for most of that time.

They usually start to vanish sometime around October up here, but it's really weather dependent (I'm in southern Ontario). It will likely find a spot on it's own to burrow down into.

- is there anything we can do to protect him from predators? our property has snakes, raccoons, owls, bats, and foxes. we have dogs, and we're wondering whether we should encourage them to mark around the patio where toby hangs out at night. (naturally, we keep the dogs away from this area.)

Personally, I pretty much let nature run it's course. I know we're on Frog Forum, but a snakes gotta eat too. In any case, I don't think there's much you can do to keep snakes at bay. Definitely keep your dog away as you've mentioned, eating an American Toad will likely end up bad for both the dog and the toad.

Best of luck, and happy toad watching. Also, feel free to post pictures of your toad!