The love song of the American Toad (Bufo americanus) is presented in two separate voices, one right the other left, which then combine to create a third, phantom voice at center-stage. This performance is set in profound natural quiet.

Checking my catalog, I see that I have recorded 338 sound portraits of frogs and toads, and I can tell you, no two are the same. Far from it, the voices of these creatures are not only individually expressive, capable of emotion and improvisation, but collectively they express something I envy--a solid connection to the collective subconscious, or so it would seem by the way something electric passes through and among them. Bayou is one example (described above) and this is another. Somehow these primitive creatures have a voice larger than any individual.*

To my ears, the American Toad (Bufo americanus) is among the most expressive toads, singing at night, often from moist areas and wet seeps during the spring throughout the eastern half of the United States.

I first heard the American Toad at Cades Cove in Great Smokey Mountain National Park in 1989, when I became entranced by the song of this species and the music of the place. The love song (imagine that) of a toad! And far better than I could muster up at the moment, but I haven't given up, yet! Whenever I hear the American Toad singing at night, back and forth across the lakes and ponds, swamps and seeps, I take pause for thoughts of higher things.

On the night of this portrait, May 30, 1992, I was camped beside an old pioneer cemetery long overgrown by shrubs and trees. I awoke in the middle of the night by the first long trill and I quickly rose and listened. I setup in the dark at the place I believed the songs were coming from and then uncoiled the microphone cable back to bed.

These toads are so honest--it's the only way that they know. Jealous listeners might ask rhetorically, "How could a toad feel?" Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But so be it, here is evidence.

Love Song of the American Toad will produce a brain rattling effect during the trill unless the playback volume is turned down to original levels that match the recording. This concert is set in profound natural silence so the beginning should be nearly silent, resist the temptation to turn up the volume during the performance. During the periods of protracted silence you can turn up the volume temporarily listen to many square miles at one time. But remember to turn the volume back down before the next solo.

*Headphones will reproduce the phantom third voice, center stage, the result of two toads singing at the same time.