Toad Yearly News

 

2020

 

We enrolled and trained 14 member volunteers for our Toad Patrol including several young families who helped on Derrydown Lane. We moved 380 toads off the roads from 15th February, plus 21 frogs and a newt! The toads are put under the gate by the surgery and the frogs were helped towards local ponds. This was stopped by lockdown on March 31st so we do not know what happened after that, but at least there was almost no traffic.

 

2021

 

We enrolled a few more members but lost our young families as home-schooling had overwhelmed them leaving a team of 13.  We picked up our first toads on 17th February and by 31st March had moved 647 to safety plus 24 frogs which involved 77 hours of often hectic volunteering as we had plenty of warm wet evenings. We learned a little more this year in that the males arrive first and lurk around the surgery car park and on the footpath to the recreation ground every night so we did not move them unless in direct danger. The surgery staff have been extremely careful to save any on Derrydown Lane as have the majority of local residents. The 2021 mating season was a hard one for them. The long cold winter meant they arrived thin while the mechanical removal of large amounts of leaning willow branches from the lake on two weekends in the middle of their breeding season didn't help. Also, the large amount of development in the lower part of the village removed much of their local summer residences! 

We registered a new crossing on the lane from Hurstbourne Priors to Tufton passing Testbourne House with Froglife in 2021 and the council put up signs ready for the 2022 season, but with no hope of being able to patrol it ourselves.

 

2022

 

We had a very successful Facebook appeal and our numbers swelled to 22. This ended up as an active group of 13 again (see below) doing roughly 74 hours of often lone patrolling while rescuing 387 frogs and 144 frogs.  The weather was incredibly difficult as there were only two wet warm days between the 7th of February and the 5th of April when there was active movement (112 arrived on one wet evening) otherwise they came in very small numbers often late at night. A slow season! The huge numbers of new frogs came over on the early colder wet days and were heading to the meadows below the surgery where they had been born three years before in the floods. Every year is very different and we are learning all the time!

The reason our numbers of volunteers went down was partly because one volunteer, a resident of Hurstbourne Priors, saw our new signs near Tufton and took on that patrol instead with a few others. Then three more crossings were suddenly discovered in Nun's Walk, Longparish with no local help and large numbers of toads in danger so some of our less local volunteers went to help there instead. 

Testbourne patrol is now run by local residents and the contact is Sam on 07876610949 if you live down that way and Longparish patrols are run by Susie on 07880733121.

 

2023

 

The two new local toad patrols founded last year are now independent and running well.