The peeps were deafening. We were standing on the edge of a rain-filled drainage ditch that paralleled a busy North Central Florida highway.



The rain, a deluge a few minutes earlier continued to fall in a fine but steady sprinkle. Rather than frightening and silencing the singers, the sounds of the streaming traffic, rubber on the wet roadway, seemed to stimulate the peeping chorus.

Jake and I, headlamps aglow, moved stealthily to the water's edge. There were so many chorusers that we found it was almost impossible to home in on one set of peeps and follow it to the source. In fact, we soon found that it was much easier and more productive to simply scan the emergent grasses.

By doing that one after the other, we found the callers - each a tiny, one inch long toad sitting with forequarters propped above water by forefeet firmly planted on a blade or two of grass. Periodically a chorusing male would balloon a proportionately immense sausage-shaped vocal sac and voice a series of loud chick-like peeps. Between peeps, the vocal sacs would deflate a bit then re-balloon as another peep was produced.

Because of lingering drought conditions, it had been years since we had happened upon a population of oak toads, Bufo quercicus, this large. This tiny toad is North America's smallest toad species and the only one that has an easy to identify shrill peeping voice.

The question now was, could we get photos without the still-falling rain shorting the cameras out? Before electronics, never had these potential problems ruled the world!