Air Date: Week of September 4, 2026

The Red Spotted Toad, spotted by Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence Mark Seth Lender. (Photo: Mark Seth Lender)

In parts of the Chihuahuan desert in New Mexico, the landscape can sometimes appear entirely still. Or at least until a red-spotted toad hops into view, as Living on Earth Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender tells it.

Transcript

CURWOOD: In parts of the Chihuahuan desert in New Mexico, the landscape can sometimes appear entirely still. Or at least until a red-spotted toad hops into view, as Living on Earth Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender tells it.

Toad in the Desert
Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge
© 2026 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

LENDER: The arroyo cuts through and through, into the red earth, winding and turning till it finds the living stone. Chert, blue-gray, flinty and pockmarked, and very old.
Sometimes the water in the arroyo runs fast, carves fast; Sometimes smooth and slow. And at the lowest point the polished sluice that results as the stream pours over the stone from drop pool to drop pool. It is quiet down at the bottom, here between the narrow walls. Even the stream, swift though shallow can hardly be heard. Nothing moves. No desert birds and nothing earthbound. Nothing at all. Until the red-spotted toad appears. Toad could be him could be her. The one consistent discriminating feature is the
throat. Dark patch, male, no patch, female. Except toad is muddy; and I can’t tell.
He(She) hops laboriously across the incline of chert, reaching the steep slabs of light colored sandstone, rests. Climbs. Rests. And carries on.
Toads live on dry land, even here in the Chihuahuan Desert where it is very very dry. A mud drenched toad is therefore odd, though not as odd as what lies in the stream. Underwater, in line with the current several hundred small black worms are attached to the sluice. Wetted, the chert beneath them looks white. The worms stand out. Unmistakable that they are alive and not some feature of the stone.
Muddy toads. Worms in water.

Strange…
That night, reviewing my photographs I realize the worms are not jet black but alternating dark and transparent segments. And that the tail end, has feet. Two small pink feet. At the other end the beginnings of eyes, the place where gills will
sprout and behind the incipient gills a translucent pouch that will become the body. Worms do not have feet, eyes, gills. The apparent absence of frogs and the presence of a red-spotted toad argues for the brief aquatic stage of a toad. And the worms that are not worms are becoming tadpoles. He(She) is Her, not him. They were her eggs and will be her progeny.
Red-spotted toads will live on.

CURWOOD: That’s Living on Earth Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender. For photos of that mama red-spotted toad, hop on over to our website, loe.org.

 

Links

Visit Mark Seth Lender's website