Hello and welcome to Natural World Facts. I'm on location here at Totternhoe Wildlife
Trust Nature Reserve looking for the Common Toad.
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I've just found a toad here in this big old water silo, just down here surrounded by beer
cans. I'm not sure how it got in but it doesn't look like there's a way out. Here he is. Beautiful
little creature.
The common toad, Bufo bufo, is the UK's most widespread species of toad. There are only
two toad species found in the UK, the other of which is the Natterjack Toad, which is
far more rare.
The best place to go looking for toads like these is damp areas, often near water as they
return to water in Springtime when they breed, meaning they can be found under logs, stones
and anywhere that will be damp and full of bugs for them to eat. This means that the
best places to find them are under logs or rocks where it's nice and damp and full of
insects which they love to eat.
They feed on a diet of slugs, worms, ants and all manner of insects, which they sneak
up on by crawling and grabbing with their long, sticky tongues.
Sometimes growing up to 13 centimetres in lengths, larger individuals of the common
toad have also been known to eat slow worms and even small grass snakes, as well as harvest
mice. The best time to see them is at night time when they're out feeding as the air is
much more humid.
They all come out at night, especially at this time of year when it's hot during the
day, it's summertime, because at night it's cooler and it's damp and all the air settles
and it's very foggy around here, meaning that not only is it nicer for them on their skin,
but also all of the slugs and the snails come out, which they hunt. And that is what this
guy is after.
So to show you the difference between frogs and toads in the UK, the common frog and the
common toad. This is a toad. It has rough, bumpy skin, quite dark in colour. In my right
hand I have a frog. They're much more smooth, they don't have the bumpy skin, they're more
wet whereas toads are dry.
You can also see that the underside of the toad has this dark colouration, this pattern
of black and white.
One of the main ways to tell the difference between frogs and toads, apart from their
appearance, is the way that they move. Frogs will use their powerful back legs to propel
themselves forwards with a mighty jump, toads prefer to crawl like this.
When they do choose to jump, much like frogs they push themselves forward with those powerful
back legs.
Common toads will return to the same ponds to spawn where they themselves were spawned.
When the female finally spawns, she'll produce two strings of eggs among water weeds, containing
up to 1,500 eggs.
During the Winter, common toads overwinter rather than hibernate; a time period during
which they spend most of their time burrowed down in mud or compost to conserve energy.
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