If you think YOUR life is boring...

Three toads spending the day in the pond skimmer

These three toads spent the entire day in the pond skimmer without moving a muscle. That might have been fine for the toad on the top, but I wouldn't have wanted to be the toad on the bottom!

I assume this is their sleeping time, resting up for the nighttime frolics in the pond. We've had at least four batches of eggs laid so far.

I've had to remove two mating pairs from the skimmer and put them in the bottom pond, but they seemed to disappear after a while. Maybe they gave up and went away.

I don't like to disturb them, but any eggs they laid in the skimmer would be going up through the return pipe, through the biofalls lava rocks and into the stream. I don't think they'd survive, so moving them is the best I can do. At any rate, we have so many thousands of eggs now developing that I don't think more eggs would necessarily mean more toads.

The saddest thing is to hear all the toads singing throughout the neighborhood, knowing that the majority of them are laying their eggs in swimming pools, which will soon be chlorinated.

More info on my frogs and toads is on my website at www.ourhabitatgarden.org/creatures/amphibians.html.