I could hear the toads' mating calls – more chirping than croaking – long before I reached their breeding pond. They'd been emerging from the woodlands for several days, crawling across wet grass with grim, unwavering determination, intent on returning to the place where they'd spent their formative stages as tadpoles. In the shallows some had begun their annual orgiastic mating ritual, coalescing into writhing, slowly rotating balls of legs and bodies. I saw one female that was clearly dead, perhaps held under water for too long by a scrum of frantic males.
A group of five had chosen to mate with a ripe reedmace seed head that had fallen into the water. It released a mass of floating seeds as their feet, struggling for grip, tore it apart. I crouched down by the pond edge to take photographs, lowering my camera to the water surface and instantly attracting the attention of a passing toad. It stopped – perhaps seeing its reflection in the lens – then lunged forward with a powerful kick of its hind legs and tried to mate with it. Failing to grip, it sank below the surface, staring up in baleful frustration.
The countenance of toads varies depending on whether they're walking, floating or peering up from the depths. On land their expression – downturned mouth and prominent eyebrow ridges – coupled with a sprawling, crawling gait, is reminiscent of a disgruntled dinosaur. Serenely afloat, legs apart, scooting across the pond with goggle eyes above the surface and mouth set in a benign, contented expression, they have the elegance of a bather enjoying a leisurely dip on a sunny day. Submerged, buoyed up by displaced water, they move among swaying water weeds with the slow-motion grace of an astronaut enjoying the weightlessness of space.