04-19-15 The Casual Toad

Yesterday my wife was out for a walk late morning and left me a voice mail of a strong chorus of American toads calling from the waterway along the Boulware trail in Champaign. Sweet! I wanted to get out there today but was busy until close to dusk. It rained all day today and the stream was swollen. Not sure what the factors were -- overcast, cooler weather, though not unreasonably cool, faster current or everyone just got their partying done yesterday, but I walked the main length along the waterway one direction and heard nothing today. On my way back, there was one solitary American toad calling perhaps once a minute or so. I started recording him and another somewhere a distance up the waterway began calling also, which seemed to give this guy a bit of motivation to step it up a bit so that the recording here has him calling about once every 30 seconds (the other one is not audible in the recording).