The European green toad, the „Amphibian of the year” in 2021

The European green toad, the „Amphibian of the year” in 2021 in Hungary, is a common visitor in our gardens. This chubby, large-bodied frog can be easily identified by its camouflage colours: the grey back has red dots and dark green patches. It has high tolerance for disturbance thus it can often be found around human settlements. Most of the year, it keeps to a terrestrial lifestyle and spends the day in its burrow, but hunts its invertebrate prey during the night.

Generally, the green toad only uses water for reproduction and it prefers shallow, sunny waterbodies. In Hungary, adult toads can mostly be found in water during April or May, but occasionally the reproductive period can last until mid-summer. Males use high-pitched advertising mating calls (“pirrr”) to attract females who will lay thousands of eggs in egg-strings. Following the mating season, they will all leave the water until the next year. The hatching tadpoles are dark coloured and they mostly eat dead plant matter and algae. They metamorphose during July or August when the small toadlets migrate in masses to land where they switch to a predatory lifestyle.

The biggest threat to green toads is the early drying of their temporarily water covered breeding sites, which is exacerbated by climate change. In urban areas, cars and the negative attitude of people towards them are also great sources of danger. Garden ponds, however, can be important for the survival of green toads. In nature, they choose shallow, ephemeral pools at sunny sites for reproduction. It is crucial for successful breeding that we do not stock our pond with fish that would feed on their eggs and tadpoles. Additionally, the shore should not be too steep so the toadlets can easily leave our pond and would not drown. Green toads can be very useful in our garden as the metamorphosing offspring export nutrients from the water, reducing the nutrient load in our pond and during their terrestrial life stage, they eat insect pests. In Hungary, the green toad is protected with a conservation value of 10 000 HUF.