Toads herald spring's arrival with lusty evening trilling. Common and intriguing, they enjoy living in suburban yards as well as woodlands and wetlands. Many toad species inhabit the world but the ...

As I had mentioned a few columns back, this first full week in May is the start of spring for me. And what a start it has been: Bluebells hit peak bloom, a full moon greeted us with bats feeding under ...

Watch for the first arriving monarch butterflies. They are following the development of milkweeds on which they lay their eggs. Woodland wildflowers such as large-flowered trillium, columbine, jack-in ...

Toads croak. Ask anyone. They croak in movies. They croak in cartoons. They croak in songs and stories. A classroom of fifth-graders making toad noises can all make amazing croaks in the back of their ...

The weather has finally gotten hot, and when I wrote this my office windows were open for the first time this spring. I could hear the 30-seconds-long trilling calls of toads coming from many of the ...

One of the first truly warm nights of the year, and I’d fallen asleep on top of the sheets. But not for long. Down the block, a woman was screaming at someone, making her outrage crystal clear to them ...

Unpredictable April seemed cloudy this year. Some folks I know grumbled about it, saying they felt robbed out of spring. They expected consecutive warm sunny days designed to make them feel alive.

The male Yosemite toad (Anaxyrus canorus) can mate like mad every year—for about two weeks. Only in late spring. And only in wet meadows, at elevations above 4,800 feet, in California’s Sierra Nevada.

It is a bit difficult to call any April normal after the springs we’ve had in recent years, but what we experienced this year would qualify as unique. During the first half of the month we recorded a ...

Most everyone recognizes frogs. Frogs, like salamanders and newts, are amphibians. Unlike salamanders, they have made a major evolutionary detour from the body plan of their ancient ancestors. The ...