I've got a new pond in the process of filling that has millions of tadpoles in it right now, mostly toads. The only fish in there are 500 1" BG and 3 lbs of minnows so nothing big enough to really eat them even if they wanted to. But today I saw a pair of spotted sand pipers (I had to look that one up in the bird book!) gorging themselves on tadpoles with no regard to toad or not. Some species of tadpole are getting pretty big and it was interesting to watch them with binoculars shake the life out of the bigger ones before sucking them down.


East Central Missouri
1 1/4 acre pond, build fall 2011
1/8 acre baitfish pond build fall 2022
[Linked Image from lh6.ggpht.com]