American toad

These little guys are brand new hatchling toad tadpoles! They were hatching out right as I found them. You can see how tiny they are - there's a bunch of them in my hand. The second picture shows some of the tadpoles still in the eggs. The black and white dots are eggs that are non-viable and did not develop into tadpoles. They may have been exposed to freezing temperatures or were out of the water. These were found in a vernal pool, which was full of algae. Toads lay their eggs in strings and you can see the string shape well in the third picture with strings of tadpoles on top of the algae in the midst of emerging. Happy spring!