Toad patrol!

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A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a local ‘Toads on the roads’ scheme after seeing a poster asking for helpers. There is a nationwide scheme broadly organised by the charity Froglife, but basically everything comes down to one or two keen local people. The problem is that in spring toads (and frogs) wake up from hibernation and set out for their ancestral breeding grounds, which may involve crossing busy roads where they get squashed in their dozens. Amphibians are already facing pressures from land drainage and development, so I joined. First the local organiser met me at the crossing point – where a busy road passes through a stretch of woods about 5 minutes’ drive from my home – and showed me the lie of the land and the location of the destination ponds. Then we just kept an eye on the weather and waited. At first it was too cold, with night temperatures still hovering around freezing. Earlier this week it started to warm up but it was very dry and only one or two toads ventured out. Then yesterday it rained all afternoon and evening and at dusk the temperature was around 8C (46F) so conditions seemed just right. Sure enough the toads came flocking from the woods. Five of us, in warm clothes and high-visibility jackets, armed with torches and buckets, patrolled the stretch of road about half a mile long. Sometimes we spotted toads, looking just like last autumn’s fallen leaves, creeping stealthily from the undergrowth. Sometimes we snatched them from the road before leaping out of the way of an approaching car. And sometimes we were too late of course, if we happened to be at one end of our patch when a toad started to cross the road at the other end and a car came at just the wrong moment. But we consoled ourselves that we had done our best and that if we hadn’t been there the carnage would have been worse. By about 10 pm (three hours after dark) only a few toads were venturing out and only the occasional car passed, and almost all our buckets held many enthusiastic toads, males, females and couples, so we decided to call it a night and deliver our captives to their destination. We carried our buckets away from the road towards the ponds then released them over an area of land nearby where they could make their way through the wet grass to the water without being too crowded. Altogether we had picked up 154 toads, 16 frogs and 8 newts so it was worth getting wet! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2016.