My friend Kathy gave me a bucket of toads. Twenty five tiny toads, actually Couch’s spadefoots (Scaphiopus couchii) to be precise. Spadefoots are toadlike amphibians, with their own family, Pelobatidae (see etymological note below). They’re native to the Sonoran desert, and their reproductive cycle is timed to take advantage of summer monsoon rains, needing only 7-8 days to go from egg to tadpole to toadlet. In between monsoon seasons, the adults stay buried deep in the soil of sandy washes to keep from drying out. They can stay buried for 8-10 months at a time, until storms bring the right conditions for them to feed and breed. The sheep-like bleating of the singing male spadefoot is an archetypal sound of the Sonoran desert. Some Arizona tribes associate toads and owls with monsoon rain, and that’s the origin of the fanciful Three Star Owl piece “Two-Toad Owl“.

These little spadefoots hatched in a standing pool in Kathy’s Scottsdale yard, where they’re plentiful. They’re very tiny — each could sit on a penny. They’re so small that it wasn’t until I saw the close-up photos that their emerald green eyes were noticeable. If you’ve never nourished toadlets, they’re easy to feed: if it moves and fits in the toadlet’s mouth, they’ll eat it. These guys have been snarfing up crickets, and other protein-rich yummies like Miller moth larvae from birdseed (and an old bag of flour!). Even ants will go down the hatch, as long as it’s not one of the larger soldiers, which put off a noxious chemical. The one on the left was photographed before the first cricket feeding; it plumped up noticeably after downing a small cricket or two.

But I’m not keeping them in captivity. Once they’re fed up, I’ll release them in our yard at twilight, where hopefully they’ll replenish our neighborhood population. Releasing them after dark will give them a head-start over the foraging Curve-billed thrashers and Cactus Wrens. A couple years ago, we would hear male spadefoots bleating like lambs after a big rainstorm, and one or two would end up in the pool, looking for somewhere to breed. But recently, we haven’t heard or seen any. So I’m hoping these guys get things going again. Good luck, little spadefoots, and ‘ware Raccoons and Coachwhips!

Photos: the adult spadefoot photo is from the US Fish & Wildlife site on Arizona Amphibians. The other photos are by A. Shock. Excellent photos and still more info about Couch’s spadefoot can be found at Firefly Forest — check it out.

Etymolgical note and stray ornithological note

About the term “spadefoot”: It comes from the small, hard digging appendage on the underside of the back legs of these amphibians. Members of the family Pelobatidae are not considered “true” toads, so it’s proper to call them simply “spadefoots”. Pelobatidae, the family name for all Spadefoots, comes from a Greek word, pelobates (πηλοβατης), literally “mud-walker”. A nice tie-in for a potter is that the first element of this word comes from the Greek word pelos, meaning “clay”, specifically the clay used by potters and sculptors. The genus, Scaphiopus, is constructed of two Greek elements and means “spade-foot”. The species name, couchii, comes from the surname of Darius Nash Couch, a U.S. Army officer who, during leave in 1853/54, traveled as a Smithsonian Institute naturalist to Mexico, where he collected specimens of both the Couch’s Spadefoot, and Couch’s Kingbird, a tyrant flycatcher native to south Texas and the gulf coast of Mexico. Out-of-range Couch’s kingbirds occasionally show up in Arizona. Recently, a Couch’s kingbird has wintered in Tacna in southwest Arizona, eating bees and behaving like a tyrant flycatcher.

Spadefoot Update

All toadlets released tonight, in three batches around the yard, in areas with lots of cover, leaf litter, and access to sandy soil. Turns out there were about 30. They all hopped away dispersing almost instantly in the dark. They are hereby encouraged to eat earwigs and small cockroaches.

On Sunday, Aug 31 2008, while birding in the middle of the Civil War (or at least a re-enactment of it), I saw a sandy-beige bird feeding on the lawn at the edge of a brushy area in Huntington Beach Central Park. It was consorting with two typically-plumaged California towhees, and it appeared to be identical to them in everything but color. The entire bird was buffy, including flight and tail feathers, with no darker brown “towhee-colored” feathers on it, and was paler on the breast and underside. Its bill was pinkish-gray. I got good looks at the bird, with and without binoculars before it flew up into a small tree about 25 feet away, where it perched for a minute, making a sharp chip note that was towhee-like. Though it was partially concealed in the branches, it was possible to get a couple of digital images. This is the best one, slightly cropped to make the bird larger in the frame. I believe it is an Isabelline California towhee.

Perhaps this aberrant-plumaged individual is well-known to local birders (I’m from out-of-state); it certainly stood out against the green lawn, and was very much brighter in tone than the other typical, subdued California towhees it was with.

Other than an absurd number of Orange-crowned warblers and the previously mentioned Civil War encampment, it was the only notable sighting of the morning. The Audubon group (LA?) we met leaving as we came in were off to Bolsa Chica because nothing much was up in the Park, perhaps because of the cannon and rifle-fire?

As a born Californian, I will refrain from making any blond remarks and simply wish the bird success in evading accipiters, feral cats, and black-powder firearms.

Incidentally, here is an explantaion for the color term “Isabelline” meaning dun or dirty beige: “The name of Isabelline, this grayish-yellow colour comes from the colour of the underwear of Isabel Clara Eugenia, daughter of King Philip II of Spain who at the siege of Ostend vowed not to change her underwear until the city was captured. The siege lasted for three years so the colour of her underwear must have been truly grayish-yellow (isabelline) when the city was finally taken.” I cannot confirm accuracy, only cite internet source.

It is a long thin snake.

Working this morning in the backyard, E heard the scolding of cactus wrens, thrashers and other regulars of our deserty neighborhood. He tracked down the source: a sleek and mottled coachwhip marauding, trying to take advantage of the monsoon “bloom” of young animals. Coachwhips (Masticophis or Coluber flagellum) are swift and tireless daytime foragers, searching the ground for favored foods such as lizards, and easily climbing our shrubby, tangled palo verdes looking for eggs and nestlings.

They are patterned cryptically, and look like the long braided látigo used by Mexican stockmen. (We called these whips “bullwhips” as kids — favored souvenirs of weekends in Ensenada, primarily used to harass each other.)

The coachwhip’s pattern is surprisingly cryptic, because like the Gila monster, it’s pink and brown, yet it still manages to disappear effectively against pebbly desert soils, and is nearly invisible even slung in the green branchlets of a palo verde, where it looks just like a rosy-brown dead branch lodged there. They’re not aggressive animals — although irritable might be the word — and they’re more likely to use their notable speed as a defense than to bite, unless handled. The Coachwhip actually earns the rattler-hunting reputation the Gophersnake enjoys less deservedly, and will eat anything it can catch and swallow, including other snakes, even rattlers.

More info on the Coachwhip here, at Tom Brennan’s excellent website on reptiles and amphibians of Arizona.

On the left is a green limestone cylinder seal and the impression it leaves in wet clay. Six thousand years ago, it hung around the neck of a Mesopotamian scribe or businessman. Now it’s now in the Louvre and despite a nasty crack you can see lovely stout beeves in a wheat field marching around it, very pastoral and comfy. This kind of seal was used all over the ancient Near East (what we now know as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and other countries in the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia) to authenticate inventories and letters written on clay tablets, clay sealings on rooms, jars and parcels, bricks, and anything else needing a stamp of approval or ownership. A combination of archaic in material and modern in use, cylinder seals were the stone rubber stamp of their day, highly portable and personalized.

Clay’s property of taking detailed impressions when moist hasn’t changed over the millenia and potters, now as then, take advantage of it. Many Three Star Owl pieces, like Beastie Ware, are textured with cylinders I’ve carved in clay and then fired, giving me a way to pattern the clay just as distinct and personal as fingerprints.

The rattlers below get lots of use in making “Crotalus” items, like this oval jar with a roadrunner on the lid.

For etymology enthusiasts: Crotalus, a genus of North American pit vipers including many of our familiar rattlers, is derived from Greek krotalon (το κροταλον), a type of rattle or castanets held in the fingertips. They were used particularly by revelers of Dionysus, making the apt connection with rattlers both for their sound and their cthonic origins. Incidentally, I’ve read that Arizona has more species of rattlesnakes than any other US state.