Getting a recording of Leaf Litter Toads calling is a bit of a surprise. They aren't rare, I have traveled to their native range many times, I have seen them many times,...but for some reason I've never heard them calling before.
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Leaf Litter Toad (Rhaebo haematiticus) |
My last night at Canopy Lodge in Anton Valley, Panama, I was walking over towards the front of my room when I heard a mysterious "peeping" coming from a little creek at the far end of the lodge. It was just getting on dusk and had rained during the afternoon. I have recorded seven species at the Canopy Lodge garden in my previous trips there, but this was something new? I didn't know what it was.
It was too loud and fast for a "tink frog" species (Craugastor or Pristimantis) and too loud and constant for any of the "Rocket Frogs" (Colostethus, Allobates or Silverstonia). I made a recording of the fast peeping with my phone and then went back to my room to get my better microphone and a flashlight to find the singer and get a better recording. After getting my gear and walking back there (3 minutes later?), the frogs had fallen silent and I couldn't see them.
To be fair, I had a bit on an issue trying to see the creek clearly because I stumbled across this creature. This is echis*, or vibora echis, the local common name for Bothrops asper. This is an infamous widespread venomous species with many different common names throughout it large range**. No matter what you call it, this was a distraction because it was right next to a walkway to people's rooms along a sidewalk that wasn't well lit. If I left it there, it would be killed by the grounds crew the next morning. Because I was there on a herpetology tour, we were experienced enough and equipped to capture and relocate it to a nearby patch of forest along a creek.
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| "Echis" (Bothrops asper) that distracted me from the task at hand |
Anyway, back to the toads....but they had fallen silent by the time we got the snake moved. 😢
But at least I had my phone recording. So you will hear a cleaned up version of that.
The Leaf Litter (or Truando) Toad is a medium sized toad of tropical rainforests from the Atlantic versant of Honduras and Nicaragua, down through the lowlands of Costa Rica, Panama and into Colombia.
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| Rhaebo haematiticus range map from IUCN Redlist Database. |
The Leaf Litter Toad is a handsome species, as toads go. Their back is a warm pastel brown and there is a boldly contrasting dark brown stripe along the side of the head continuing on to middle of the body. Their belly and around the hind legs is suffused with an salmon or orange wash. It is quite a surprise meeting this "toad" if you are more familiar with the mostly drab toads of the northern hemisphere.
The call of this toad is a series of loud peeps. It reminds me of the "chick-like" peeps of the Oak Toad (Anaxyrus quercicus) of the southeastern US, but this species is larger, so the peeps are louder and are repeated many times in succession (rather than the single peeps of the Oak Toad).
The call is a series of these upward slurred peeps at around 2.4kHz. When I heard these toads, they were repeating about 7 peeps per second for around 10 seconds per call. This rate and possibly the frequency would be temperature dependent. But in the relatively narrow temperature range of the lowland neotropics, it may not vary much?
And here, for your listening pleasure, is the call of the Leaf Litter Toad.
Litter Toad calls from Anton Valley, Panama
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© Chris Harrison 2026
* There is a possibility of some confusion around this common name. While "echis" is the Spanish common name used in most of Panama for this well-known serpent, it is also the genus name for a group of Saw-scaled Vipers and Carpet Vipers of northern and central Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and western India. The Panamanian name is a reference to the letter X (echis in Spanish), a reference to the X-like patterns seen on their backs. They are not closely related to the vipers of the Old World.
** A commonly used "English" name for this species is Terciopelo. This name is the Costa Rican name for this species, and since most English speaking people's first (only) exposure to this species comes on tourist visits to that country, that name "sticks". But it is known by several other Spanish common names throughout its range (including "echis"). Occasionally this species is referred to as the "Fer-de-Lance" because people are familiar with that name. However, that name is technically reserved for a species of lancehead viper found only on the island of Martinique (thus the French name!). The name "Central American Lancehead" is probably a much better name for this widespread snake.
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