Common Toad (Bufo bufo): Facts, Migration and Habitat

Appearance: how to recognize a common toad

The common toad is a squat, broad-bodied amphibian with short legs. Its skin is dry and covered in small, rounded bumps, often called warts. The back is brown, olive-brown or grayish-brown, sometimes with darker blotches, and the belly is a dirty white with gray or black speckles. Females tend to be browner, males grayer.

The eyes are one of its best features: large and bulging, with a striking copper, orange or golden-yellow iris and a horizontal, slit-shaped pupil. Just behind each eye is a long, swollen ridge called a parotoid gland. In the common toad these two glands slant outward toward the back, rather than running parallel as they do in the natterjack toad and green toads.

Other details help confirm the identification:

• No teeth: the wide mouth has no teeth at all, so prey is swallowed whole.
• Short hind legs: the long toes of the hind feet are only slightly webbed, which suits a toad that walks more than it swims.
• No external vocal sac: males cannot inflate a balloon-like throat sac as many frogs do.

The species most often confused with it is the common frog, which has smooth, moist skin, a pointed snout, long legs and a dark “mask” behind the eye. For a full guide to the differences, see frog vs toad.

How big do common toads get?

Females are clearly larger than males. In central and northern Europe, males usually reach up to about 9 cm (3.5 in) from snout to vent, the standard way of measuring frogs and toads, while females reach about 12 cm (4.7 in). Toads in the south of the range tend to be larger than those in the north.

Most adult males weigh around 30–50 g (1–1.8 oz), and most females around 50–100 g (1.8–3.5 oz). A female full of eggs in spring can exceptionally weigh more than 150 g (5.3 oz). The larger toads, up to about 15 cm (6 in), that are often mentioned in older books mostly belong to the spiny toad of Iberia and western France, which was long treated as part of the same species.

Habitat and range

After the common frog, the common toad is one of the most widespread amphibians in Europe. It lives from Britain, France and Scandinavia east across central and eastern Europe and Russia into western Siberia, and south to Italy, the Balkans and Greece. It is absent from Ireland, Iceland, the far north of Scandinavia and several Mediterranean islands, including Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Crete and the Balearic Islands. In the early 2010s scientists split off the toads of Iberia, western France and North Africa as a separate species, the spiny toad (Bufo spinosus).

On land the common toad is adaptable. It favors damp deciduous and mixed woodland, but it also lives in hedgerows, meadows, heathland, farmland, parks and gardens, and it can be found up to about 2,500 m (8,200 ft) in the southern mountains. Adults often spend the summer far from water, sometimes more than a kilometer from their breeding pond.

For breeding, however, the toad is choosy. It prefers fairly large, deep, permanent ponds, lakes, reservoirs and flooded gravel pits, even ones with fish, because its tadpoles taste bad to most fish. Shallow ponds that dry out in summer are used far less than by common frogs.

Diet: what do common toads eat?

The common toad is a nighttime hunter of invertebrates. Its diet includes beetles, ants, woodlice, slugs, earthworms, spiders, caterpillars, flies and other insects. Large toads occasionally swallow bigger prey, such as small slow-worms, young newts or even a baby mouse, but these are rare extras.

A toad hunts mainly by sight and reacts to movement. It will turn toward a small, dark, moving object, creep closer and then strike. Small, quick prey is caught with a flick of the sticky tongue, while larger items such as earthworms are grabbed with the jaws and pushed into the mouth with the front feet. Because it has no teeth, it swallows food whole, and, as in many frogs, it blinks while swallowing: the eyeballs sink down into the head and help push food toward the throat.

Toads can see well in very dim light, and on damp nights they may travel a good distance while feeding. Gardeners value them because they eat many slugs and beetle larvae.

Behavior: a slow, nocturnal life

Outside the breeding season the common toad lives alone. It spends the day in a shallow hollow it has scraped under leaves, a root, a stone or a log, often using the same hiding place for weeks. It comes out at dusk, especially in wet weather, and returns before morning.

Toads usually walk slowly or make short, shuffling hops instead of long leaps. When threatened, a common toad does not try to run. Instead it puffs itself up with air, rises on its legs and tilts its body toward the attacker, with the head lowered and the back raised. This makes it look bigger and presents the toxin-filled glands to the predator.

From about October to February or March, common toads hibernate on land. They bury themselves in loose soil, or use rodent burrows, compost heaps, piles of leaves or the foundations of buildings, sometimes in groups with other amphibians.

Spring migration and toad crossings

The best-known event in the common toad’s year is its spring migration. As the first mild, damp nights arrive, usually between late February and April, adults wake from hibernation and head for their breeding ponds. They move mainly at dusk and through the night, and they travel far only when the air is above about 5 °C (41 °F).

Common toads are strongly faithful to their breeding sites. Most adults return to the pond where they were born, even when other suitable water lies closer, and they appear to find it using a mix of smell, magnetic cues and landmarks. This loyalty means that thousands of toads may follow the same route each year. Where a road crosses that route, large numbers can be killed by traffic in a single night.

To help, volunteers across Europe run toad patrols, carrying toads across roads in buckets, and some roads have toad tunnels and fences or temporary closures. In Britain, these toad crossings are coordinated by the charity Froglife. For the full story, read Why do toads migrate in spring?

Reproduction and life cycle

Males usually reach the pond first and may stay for several weeks, while females arrive later and leave soon after spawning. Males often outnumber females several times over, so competition is intense. A male grabs a female from behind and holds her tightly under the armpits, a grip called amplexus, and rival males may try to push him off. Sometimes several males cling to one female in a writhing “toad ball.”

The female lays her eggs in two long, gelatinous strings, which the pair wind around water plants as they move about in the shallows. One pair can produce a double string 3–4.5 m (10–15 ft) long containing about 1,500–6,000 small black eggs. This is the easiest way to tell toad spawn from frog spawn, which is laid in clumps.

The tadpoles hatch after about 10 days. They are small and very dark, almost black, and often gather in large shoals. After about two to three months they grow legs, absorb their tails and leave the water as tiny toadlets about 1–1.5 cm (0.4–0.6 in) long. Only a small fraction survive to adulthood, which is reached after about three to five years in most populations, and sometimes later in cold climates.

How long do common toads live?

For a small animal, the common toad can live a long time. In the wild, adults are thought to live up to about 10–12 years, an age scientists can estimate by counting growth rings in the toad’s finger and toe bones. Most toads die much younger, especially as eggs, tadpoles and toadlets.

In captivity, common toads have lived for more than 30 years, and there are older reports of toads reaching 40 years or more, although such early records are hard to verify. For more on lifespans, see How long do toads live?

Predators and defenses

The toad’s main defense is chemical. Its parotoid glands and the smaller glands in its skin produce a bitter, milky secretion containing bufotoxins, steroid compounds that act on the heart. A predator that bites a toad usually gets a mouthful of foul-tasting fluid and drops it. This is why many animals, including most fish, avoid common toads and their tadpoles. To learn how this toxin works, see Are toads poisonous?

Some predators have found ways around it. The grass snake eats toads with little harm. Hedgehogs, rats, polecats and mink take toads, and herons, crows and buzzards eat them too. Crows have been seen piercing a toad’s skin and eating the liver while avoiding the toxic skin, and otters often skin toads before eating them. Tadpoles are eaten by dragonfly larvae, diving beetles and water bugs, which pierce the skin and suck out the insides.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classifies the common toad as Least Concern, because it is widespread and still common over much of its range. However, numbers have fallen in several countries. A 2016 study using records from British toad patrols estimated that common toads in the UK had declined by about 68% over 30 years, and the species is now a priority for conservation there.

The main threats are:

• Road traffic: in Europe, the common toad has one of the highest roadkill rates of any amphibian.
• Loss of breeding ponds: wetlands drained or filled in for farming and building.
• Habitat fragmentation: urban populations cut off by development can lose genetic diversity.
• Pollution and disease: agricultural chemicals and amphibian diseases such as chytridiomycosis, which has been recorded in common toads in Spain and the UK.
• Climate change: warmer winters that disturb hibernation and drier springs in the south of the range.

Myths, folklore and people

Few wild animals are as tied to European gardens as the common toad. Toads use log piles, compost heaps and damp corners, and they breed in garden and park ponds if the water is deep enough. Gardeners value them because a single toad eats large numbers of slugs and beetles over a summer.

Folklore has been less kind. In the Middle Ages toads were linked with witches and the Devil, and people believed some toads carried a magic “toadstone” in their heads. Two myths survive today. Handling a toad does not give you warts: human warts are caused by a virus, and a toad’s bumps are glands, as explained in Do toads give you warts? And common toads cannot spit or squirt poison; their toxin only oozes out when the toad is bitten or squeezed.

Writers have long been fond of toads. Mr. Toad of The Wind in the Willows is one of the best-loved characters in English children’s books, and George Orwell wrote an essay praising the toad’s return from hibernation as a sign of spring.

The best way to help common toads is simple: leave wild corners, log piles and leaf litter, avoid slug pellets and garden chemicals, keep or create a pond, and watch out for them on roads on mild, wet spring nights. Toads are wild animals and are best enjoyed by watching, not handling.