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Fowler's toad

Anaxyrus fowleri · Frogs and toads · Amphibians

Fowler's toad (Anaxyrus fowleri): Toad 5-9.5 cm, brown, grey or olive-green, with black-edged dark back spots that each contain three or more warts and a light mid-dorsal stripe. Belly usually whitish and almost unspotted apart from a single dark spot on the chest. This profile does not establish whether taking it is legal anywhere.

Check rules for a place and date

Certified rules currently represented in Hunt: coverage in development. This is coverage, not a legal answer.

Scientific name
Anaxyrus fowleri
Family
Bufonidae
In North America
Native
Range
NatureServe lists it in southern Ontario and across the eastern US from New England and Michigan south to Florida and west to Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
Biology

How to identify it

Toad 5-9.5 cm, brown, grey or olive-green, with black-edged dark back spots that each contain three or more warts and a light mid-dorsal stripe. [1][2]

Belly usually whitish and almost unspotted apart from a single dark spot on the chest. [1][2]

Males tend to be darker, females lighter; enlarged parotoid glands behind the eyes release a noxious secretion. [1][2]

Tadpoles are short-bodied with a long tail and upper and lower fins. [1][2]

Compared with the american toad: American has only one or two warts per dark back spot. [1][2]

Species it is confused with

Check these before deciding what you are looking at. If you are not certain what it is, do not shoot.

Field notes

  • Identification Confirm a fowler's toad before you act. Compared with the american toad: American has only one or two warts per dark back spot.[1][2]
Field knowledge

Where it lives

Wooded areas, river valleys and floodplains including farmland and residential areas, usually with deep friable soils; breeds in shallow marshes, rain pools, ponds and reservoirs with little current. Beach and dune habitat is also used. [1][2]

Field knowledge

How it behaves

Sources disagree on timing: described as completely nocturnal in one account and mostly diurnal in another; burrows during very hot or cold spells. [1][2]

Adults eat insects and small terrestrial invertebrates and avoid earthworms, unlike the American toad; tadpoles scrape algae. [1][2]

Inactive in fall, winter and early spring; hybridizes with the American toad in some areas. [1][2]

Regulatory handoff

Limited legal take

Legal take of this species exists only under narrow conditions — a quota, a draw, a permit, a small area, or animals released or held on private land — set by the authorities below. Nowhere else is a legal opportunity implied, and Hunt shows one only where a certified rule establishes it.

Where legal take is listed

Being listed is not an open season. Seasons, zones, licences, methods and limits decide whether this animal may be taken on a given day and place — check Hunt or the authority before you go. Listings read 2026-09-30.

Geospatial intelligence

Where it is found

NatureServe lists it in southern Ontario and across the eastern US from New England and Michigan south to Florida and west to Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Biology

Sources

Every claim above is attributed to one of these published sources.

  1. NatureServe · reviewed 2026-09-30

    NatureServe

  2. Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology · reviewed 2026-09-30

    Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology