Wisconsin Area - Toads?

[UncleChester]

Hi Amy,

I'm just east of you, across the lakes so we had a similar long and very cold winter. The toads here showed up in the breeding ponds sporadically about a month ago and were in full chorus 3 weeks back, so there's now a pile of little toad tadpoles swimming around. They were maybe a week behind compared to 2013.

None of the tadpoles have morphed yet, but the older ones started turning up on land about 2 or 3 weeks ago and are now all over the place. The little guy below was found 2 weeks back. Nothing scientific of course, but they seem to have wintered just fine over here.

The Green Frogs and Leopard Frogs back at our big pond are another story. It's very large, spring fed, 50 or 60' across and about 8' deep in the middle. Almost all the frogs that tried to winter in it appear to have been wiped out with many belly up corpses as harsh evidence. Some of last years Green Frog Tadpoles survived, but nothing like the huge populations of overwintering tadpoles and frogs we usually have. A few adults have recently showed up, but from my near daily trips to this pond the last couple months, I'm fairly certain they didn't winter in it. On the plus side, this tadpole shortage has allowed billions of mosquito larva to survive to adult hood and make their way out of the pond and feast upon me, so that's nice I guess.