Arizona Tiger Salamander (maybe)

Gary M. Stolz/USFWS

Scientific Name: Ambystoma tigrinum nebulosum
Description: 3 - 6 1/2 in. Neotenics: 7-15 in. Large, stocky; broad snout; small eyes. Tubercles on soles of feet. No paratoid glands. Generally gray with small dark marks.
Habitat: Arid sagebrush plains and rolling grasslands to mountain meadows and forests. Sea level to 11,000 feet.
Habits: Migrate during or after rains. Spend much time underground. Adults found under objects near water or crawling at night to and from breeding sites.
Reproduction: Breeds July to August in arid Southwest during periods of rainfall. Mates in temporary pools, fishless ponds. Egg masses adhere to submerged debris.
Diet: Earthworms, large insects, small mice, and amphibians.

Mexican Spadefoot


(formerly the Southern Spadefoot, Scaphiopus multiplicatus)
Scientific Name: Spea multiplicata
Description: 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 inches. Brown or dark gray with scattered dark spots and large red-tipped tubercles. Iris often copper colored. No cranial boss. Wedge-shaped spade.
Habitat: Desert grassland, shortgrass plains, sagebrush desert, pinyon-juniper and open pine forests. Sandy or gravely soil.
Reproduction: Breeds during summer rains.
Voice: A metallic vibrating snore; lasting about 3/4 - 1-1/2 seconds. Click here to listen
Note: When handled, may emit a peanutlike odor and cause tearing and nasal discharge if skin secretion comes close to or in contact with one's face.

Couch's Spadefoot

Gary M. Stolz/USFWS

Scientific Name: Scaphiopus couchii
Description: 2 1/4 - 3 1/2 inches. Large greenish, greenish-yellow, or brownish-yellow spadefoot with irregular blotches of black, brown, or dark green. Whitish below. No boss between the eyes. Sickle-shaped spade. Male: often more greenish than female. Dark markings above usually subdued or absent. Throat pale. Young: often heavily dark-blotched.
Habitat: Shortgrass plains, mesquite savannah, and deciduous forest.
Habits: Nocturnal. During dry periods stays underground in the burrow of a small mammal or buried in loose soil.
Reproduction: Breeds May - September, during rains. Eggs are laid on plant stems in temporary pools.
Voice: A plaintive cry or groan, declining in pitch, like the anxious bleat of a sheep; a drawn-out yee-ow, lasting 1/2 - 1-1/4 seconds. Vocal sac round. Click here to listen
Note: Sneezing and discharge from eyes and nostrils have been reported from handling this species.

Arizona Toad

Scientific Name: Bufo microscaphus
Description: Warts low and with few or no tubercles. Generally gray but highly variable. Front of parotoids, central portion of upper eyelids, and especially central portion of upper back and sacral hump areas often paler in color. Young: Above light olive or salmon. Warts often reddish-brown. Male: Throat pale, like female's.
Habitat: Riparian areas from lowlands to high in the uplands of Arizona Central Plateau.
Reproduction: Breeds February - July.
Note: Estimated to have disappeared from around 75 percent of its known historic range.

Woodhouse's Toad

Gary M. Stolz/USFWS

Scientific Name: Bufo woodhousei
Description: 1 3/4 - 5 inches. Whitish dorsal stripe, distinct narrow crests. Elongate parotoids. Tends to lack a stripe on snout. A boss is sometimes present. Gray, yellowish-brown, olive, or blackish, usually with dark blotches. Yellow and black markings on thighs. Cream to beige below, with or without dark flecks. Tends to have well-developed black markings on each side of chest. Male: Throat sooty. Young: Dorsal stripe may be weak or absent.
Habitat: Grassland, sagebrush flats, woods, desert streams, valleys, and backyards. Prefers sandy areas.
Habits: Primarily nocturnal. Occasionally active during the day, but typically remains in its burrow or vegetation.
Reproduction: Breeds March - July in quiet water of streams, marshes, lakes, usually during or soon after it rains. Egg strings are attached to vegetation in shallow water.
Voice: Has been compared to a snore, an infant's cry, and the bawling of a calf—a nasal w-a-a-a-ah. An explosive, wheezy sound usually lasting about 1 - 2 1/2 seconds, often suddenly dropping in pitch at the end. Round vocal sac. Click here to listen

Great Plains Toad

Scientific Name: Bufo cognatus
Description: 1 4/5 - 4 1/2 inches. Large, pale-bordered dark blotches, in symmetrical pairs. Cranial crests form a boss on the snout. Inner tubercle on each hind foot usually sharp-edged. Generally light brown, olive, or gray above, with dusky, olive, or green blotches. Sometimes a narrow middorsal stripe. Whitish below, usually unspotted. Young: Numerous small, red tubercles. Crests form a V. Male: Dark loose skin of deflated vocal sac often partly concealed by pale skin flap.
Habitat: Prairies or deserts, shallow temporary pools or quiet water of streams, marshes. Primarily a grassland species but frequents creosote bush desert and sagebrush plains.
Reproduction: Often breed after heavy rains in summer, March - September. Egg strings are attached to debis on bottom of pool.
Habits: Nocturnal, but sometimes found foraging on cloudy, rainy days. Proficient burrower. When in danger, it inflates, closes its eyes, and lowers its head to the ground.
Diet: Cutworms.
Voice: A high-pitched, almost metallic trill, lasting 5-50 or more seconds, almost deafening when large numbers are heard at close range. When inflated, vocal sac sausage-shaped, 1/3 size of body. Click here to listen

Sonoran Desert Toad (Colorado River Toad)

Scientific Name: Bufo alvarius
Description: 4 - 7 1/2 inches. Dark brown, olive, or gray above, with smooth skin; long, kidney-shaped parotoids; prominent cranial crests. Several large warts on the hind legs. An enlarged whitish wart near angle of the jaw. Cream below. Young: Light-colored warts, set in dark spots. Male: Throat pale, as in female.
Habitat: Arid mesquite-creosote bush lowlands and arid grasslands into the oak-sycamore-walnut groves in mountain canyons. Often near permanent water of springs, reservoirs, canals, and streams, also temporary pools. Widespread throughout desert.
Habits: Nocturnal. Activity stimulated by rainfall. Assumes a butting pose when molested, with its parotoid glands directed toward the intruder.
Reproduction: May to July.
Diet: Insects, spiders, lizards, and other toads.
Voice: Weak, low-pitched, resembling a ferry-boat whistle. Hoots last 1/2 to about 1 second. Vocal sac absent or vestigial.
Note: A dog may be temporarily paralyzed (rarely killed) if it mouths one of these toads.

Red-spotted Toad

Scientific Name: Bufo punctatus
Description: 1 1/2 - 3 inches. Small toad with a flattened head and body and round parotoids, each about the same size as an eye. Pointed snout. Cranial crests weak or absent. Light gray, olive, or reddish brown above, with reddish or orange warts. Whitish to buff below, with or without spotting. Young: Numerous red- or orange-tipped warts. Dark-spotted below. Underside of feet yellow. Male: Throat dusky.
Habitat: Desert streams and oases, open grassland and scrubland, oak woodland, rocky canyons. Sometimes found on the floodplains of rivers; more often found on or among rocks, where it finds shelter in the crevices. Climbs rocks with ease.
Reproduction: Breeds March-September during or after rains in springs, rain pools, reservoirs, and temporary pools of intermittent streams. The only North American toad that lays eggs one at a time, not in long strings, on bottoms of pools.
Habits: Chiefly nocturnal, but may be diurnal when breeding.
Voice: Prolonged, clear musical trill, lasting 6-10 seconds. Pitch high, often nearly constant but occasionally dropping toward the end. Vocal sac round. Click here to listen

Western Chorus Frog

Scientific Name: Pseudacris triseriata
Description: 3/4 - 1-1/2 in. Small, slim frog without toe pads and little webbing. Coloration highly variable: gray, brown, reddish, olive, or green. Dark stripe from snout through eye region to groin, contrasting with white stripe on the upper jaw. Usually 3 dark stripes on back, sometimes broken or replaced by spots. Often a triangular spot on head. Whitish, yellowish, or pale olive below; unmarked or with a few dark spots on throat and chest. Male: Throat greenish yellow to dark olive, with lengthwise folds of loose skin.
Habitat: Grassy pools, lakes, and marshes of prairies and mountains. Grassland, woodland, forest.
Reproduction: Breeds November - July in shallow, temporary pools in the open, but also uses deep, more permanent water in dense woods.
Voice: Vibrant prreep, prreep, each call with rising inflection, and lasting 1/2 - 2 seconds. To imitate the call, stroke small teeth of a pocket comb. Choruses occur night and day during height of breeding season. Vocal sac round and slightly flattened. Click here to listen

Canyon Treefrog

P. Cooper

Scientific Name: Hyla arenicolor
Description: 1 1/4 - 2 1/4 inches. Brown, cream, or olive-gray treefrog that usually has no eyestripe; blotched or spotted with dark brown or olive, but sometimes with little or no pattern. Cream below. Large toe pads. Webbing of hind foot moderately well developed. Skin rather rough. Male: Throat dusky.
Habitat: Intermittent or permanent streams with quiet pools that have a hard, rocky bottom. Arroyos in semi-arid grassland, streams in pinyon-juniper and pine-oak woodlands. Chiefly ground-dwelling but occasionally climbs trees.
Habits: Primarily nocturnal. Often huddles in niches on the sides of boulders or streambanks, within easy jumping distance of water.
Reproduction: April-July, often in rock-bound pools in canyon bottoms.
Voice: An explosive, single-pitched whirring that sounds like a rivet gun and lasts 1/2 - 3 seconds. Vocal sac looks weakly bilobed from above.

Bullfrog

P. Cooper

Scientific Name: Rana catesbeiana
Description: 3 1/2 - 8 inches. Olive-green or brown above, often grading to light green on the head; sometimes light green only on upper jaw. Legs banded and blotched with dusky, and usually some spotting on the back. Whitish mottled with gray below. A fold of skin extends from the eye around the eardrum and down toward base of forearm. No dorsolateral folds. Eardrums conspicuous. Young: Often with numerous small spots on dorsum. Skin fold from rear of eye around eardrum. Male: Yellow throat. Eardrum larger than eye. Swollen and darkened thumb base.
Habitat: Prairie, woodland, forests, desert oases, and farmland. Marshes, ponds, lakes, and streams.
Habits: Highly aquatic, remaining in or near permanent water. Wary by day but readily found at night by its eyeshine. Often easily caught when dazzled by light. When first seized, it may "play possum," hanging limp and motionless.
Reproduction: Breeds February-October. Egg masses are attached to submerged vegetation. Tadpoles are large, 4 - 6 3/4 inches, olive-green, and may take almost 2 years to transform.
Diet: Insects, crayfish, other frogs, minnows; large specimens may eat birds and young snakes.
Voice: A deep-pitched bellow suggesting jug-o-rum or br-wum. Frightened individuals may give a squawk or catlike miaow when they leap into the water. Vocal sac single and internal. Click here to listen

Lowland Leopard Frog

Scientific Name: Rana yavapaiensis
Description: 2 - 3 1/2 in. Tan, gray-brown, or light gray-green to green above; yellow below. Dorsolateral folds, tubercles, and usually vague upper lip stripe. Chin mottled in older individuals. Dark pattern on rear of thighs. Yellow groin color often extends onto rear of belly and underside of legs. Male: swollen and darkened thumb base.
Habitat: Desert, grassland, oak and oak-pine woodland, entering the permanent pools of foothill streams, overflow ponds and side channels of major rivers, permanent springs, and in drier areas, more or less permanent stock tanks. Usually stays close to water.
Reproduction: Breeds February-April, sometimes in fall.
Note: Lowland Leopard Frog hybridizes with Chiricahua Leopard Frog in areas where ranges overlap in Arizona. Bullfrogs are one of several factors associated with the significant decline of this species in the desert Southwest.
Voice: 10-16 pulses per second. Calls may last 3-8 seconds, the first note held longer than the 6-15 accelerating notes that follow. Call is a series of faint high-pitched chuckling notes and short guttoral grunting sounds suggestive of rubbing an inflated rubber balloon.

Sources:

Behler, John L. and F. Wayne King. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1996.

Conant, Roger and Joseph T. Collins. A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America—Third Edition, Expanded. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1998.

Ernst, Carl H. Venomous Reptiles of North America. Smithsonian Institution Press. 1992.

Klauber, Laurence M. Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories, and Influence on Mankind. University of California Press. 1982.

Pough, F. Harvey, Robin M. Andrews, John E. Cadle, Martha L. Crump, Alan H. Savitzky, and Kentwood D. Wells. Herpetology. Prentice Hall. 1998.

Stebbins, Robert C. A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians—Second Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1985.