SHEILA GUNDRY : You're walking down the road and suddenly in

front of you there's just something that's a little bit

higher and you just get your eye in, you just get used to it and

you spot that just down there there's a little frog or a

little toad.

MIKE COLLINS: Sometimes it's quite difficult to spot the

newts because they're so small and you start almost

hallucinating that it's a newt and actually it's a twig or you

think it's a twig and it's actually a newt. And sometimes

the... the frogs or toads will hide under the leaves and

they'll just see their head.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Across Britain, toads are on the move,

making their way to the ponds where they breed. They're

following the same routes they've used for centuries. But

today, many of those routes cut across busy roads, and many

never make it. In this episode, we join a group of volunteers

who are helping to change that. I'm Rosie Holdsworth and this is

Wild Tales, Toad Patrol.

It's dusk on Charlcombe Lane in Bath, a narrow road with houses

on one side and hedgerows on the other. And tonight it's

unusually quiet.

For six weeks a year this road closes to traffic. Not for

roadworks, not for flooding, but for frogs, toads and newts.

Every February amphibians start moving through this valley.

They've spent the winter hidden away. Now they're heading back

to the ponds where they breed. And to reach them they must

cross this lane. Which is why at dusk the first volunteer

arrives.

MIKE COLLINS: My name's Mike Collins and I'm one of the

volunteers with the Charlcombe Toad Rescue Group. So it's early

evening in the beginning of March and sort of the light's

starting to fade a little bit. You can hear a green woodpecker

yaffling in the background and lots of bird songs. So we're

starting to get into that time of day when the amphibians start

to move.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Mike is one of 60 volunteers who patrol this

lane every evening during the migration season.

MIKE COLLINS: I'm wearing a high-vis jacket. I have some

special gloves so that we don't get any of the sort of chemicals

on our hands from detergents or hand wash onto their skin. We

have buckets for the amphibians and we have high-powered torches

as well.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The idea is simple. If they spot an

amphibian on the road, they gently pick it up, put it in a

bucket, and carry it to a safe drop-off point so it can

continue its journey to the pond below.

MIKE COLLINS: When you're walking down dusk onwards, you

slowly panning the torch from left to right and there might be

20 or 30 frogs and toads and newts on the road that just

wouldn't make it if we weren't here helping them.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Also out on the lane tonight is Sheila

Gundry from the conservation charity Frog Life. Sheila knows

this stretch well and the challenges the amphibians face.

SHEILA GUNDRY : One of the hazards for the amphibians is

the cars on the road. But another issue is there's just so

many walls. There's so many garden walls and walls around

houses. So if the toads, frogs and newts do get across the

road, they then can't get any further. There's only a few

places they can get through.

So sometimes they have actually got across the road, they've

made it past the cars, and then they're stuck because there's a

wall. And for several hundred metres there's a wall. So in

those cases we pick them up and we take them to a suitable

place.

As part of the induction for the volunteers, we show them where

the best places are so that the toads and frogs and newts can

get down as easily as possible.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Volunteers have been patrolling Charlcombe

Lane since the 1990s, but it wasn't until the early 2000s

that their efforts began to make a real difference.

MIKE COLLINS: Charlcombe Lane has been closed every year

during the migration season since 2003. So, the local

council closed the road for six or seven weeks every year, which

has made a real difference in terms of the casualty rate

dropping from about 65% to about 3% to 4%.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: All the volunteers carry three small

clickers, one for... Toads, one for frogs and one for newts.

Each animal safely carried across the lane is counted and

the data is sent to Frog Life.

MIKE COLLINS: So in 2025 we had 3,995, which is our second best

year ever. And this year we've had some busy nights already and

we had over 800 on one very wet night.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: But for the volunteers it's not all about

saving lives.

MIKE COLLINS: One of our volunteers described it as

amphibian therapy. So, you know, you've had a really bad day at

work, you've had too much screen time or too many meetings, or

you just want to get out and coming out here, you can just

feel your stress levels going down.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: So why are the amphibians here in the first

place? Sheila tells us more.

SHEILA GUNDRY : The amphibians, the frogs, toads and newts, they

spend all summer out and about foraging, just eating. They're

in people's gardens, they're in the woods, they're all over the

place. They spread out a long way. And during the winter,

amphibians do what's called brumation. They brumate and that

is like a deep sleep. It's not quite as deep a sleep as

hibernation. It's more of a lighter sleep.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And whilst they're in their brumation

period, they need somewhere safe to shelter.

SHEILA GUNDRY : A really good place is a big stack of logs or

somewhere that's slightly underground or maybe under your

shed or something like that.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And this shelter has a rather unusual

name.

SHEILA GUNDRY : They're called hibernacula. One is a

hibernaculum. And then in January or February, they're

ready to go. So they start quite early in the year. They then

head off to their breeding ponds. And they've been doing

this for hundreds and thousands of years.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And when they wake from their slumber, things

can get a little frantic.

SHEILA GUNDRY : The toads do get very, very enthusiastic. The

males get on to the females. And sometimes you get several on top

of each other. And then in the pond sometimes, if there's not

enough females, they'll then get in a bit of a ball and land on

top of each other, which can be quite hazardous with the

females.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: It may sound chaotic, but it's all part of a

biological urge to breed.

SHEILA GUNDRY : Everyone knows what frog spawn is like and toad

spawn. Not everyone's seen toad spawn. It's like a beautiful

necklace with pairs of eggs going down. It's lovely. They

sort of wind it around some little plants within the water.

So it takes a little bit to get your eye in and notice it, but

once you do, you can see a lot of it in the pond.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Within weeks, those eggs will hatch into

tadpoles, and as they develop into frogs and toads, some will

return here to breed, completing the cycle.

As the light begins to fade, the worm moon, the last moon of

winter, sits high in the sky, reflected in the breeding pond

below. And along Charlcombe Lane... More volunteers begin to

arrive.

SHEILA GUNDRY : Hello, hi, how are you? I'm all right, hello.

ANGELA: Hello.

SHEILA GUNDRY : That moon is on the water, can you see? Just to

go a little bit round.

ANGELA: Wow, that is stunning.

SHEILA GUNDRY : And we've got an owl going.

ANGELA: That owl's always here.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Lucy, Lance and Angela have just turned up

to help patrol.

LUCY: It's just nice knowing that every time you come out, if

you even pick up two or three and you feel they haven't got

squashed, then that's fine, that's fine for the evening.

LANCE: It's actually quite rewarding, especially when

you're helping out nature. It's probably been here for hundreds

of years, long before the cars and this tarmac lane.

ANGELA: When it's a warm, wet night, it's quite exciting

because you know you're going to get lots of frogs and toads out.

So you don't mind it when it's raining so much, collecting the

amphibians.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And just what can the team expect to see

tonight?

SHEILA GUNDRY : So at this site we get Palmate Newts, common

frogs and common toads and that's the three main ones we

get at this site.

Frogs tend to be sort of quite upright or quite a long thin

head. So the first thing you notice is this stance, whereas

toads are very squat and more flattened to the ground. So

that's the first thing I would notice when I'm walking down the

road.

And then when you get a little bit closer the frogs have got a

very dark patch behind their ears and that's a really good

way of telling that they're frogs and not toads.

Especially if you're just a pond and you only see their head and

you can't see anything else, you can see that dark patch behind

their eyes.

And frogs have got longer legs and they're quite stripy legs.

And so they tend to do more bouncing. So if you walk towards

an amphibian and it's leapt away, chances are it's a frog.

If it's still there, it's likely to be a toad. Because they're

more likely to sort of waddle along and walk, whereas the

frog's more likely to jump out of the way.

We always use gloves to pick them up so that we don't damage

them and the little technique that we use is if you put your

hand sort of in front of their nose. So if they leap they leap

into your hand rather than off they go so they don't leap and

we don't damage them when we're picking them up.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Buckets in hands and torches switched on,

the patrol sets off, looking for the slightest of movements.

LANCE: A lot of the time, when you're looking at the wall, you

look at the cracks in the wall. That's where they tend to come

out of.

It's a perfect hibernation place, isn't it, a stone wall,

so it's nice and damp but protected over the winter

months.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: It's not just the cracks and crevices around

the wall the patrol need to check in.

SHEILA GUNDRY : Another hazard for the amphibians is the

drains. So the drains are beautifully designed so that all

the water heads down into them. But if the water's going fast,

it'll take amphibians with them. And there's quite a lot of

drains along Chalcombe Lane.

So one of the things we do is just to check that the

amphibians haven't been washed down into the drains.

And then we have special techniques to get them out if

they do. But what some patrols do around the country is they

have little amphibian ladders. You can get a little ladder so

that... And at the beginning of the season, they put the ladders

in and then the amphibians can get themselves out of the drain.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The patrol are searching anywhere an amphibian

may be hiding. And they're surprisingly well camouflaged,

as Lance points out.

SPK_6: We're looking in the leaves. And some of the frogs

actually are very camouflaged. They tone in really well with

the leaves. So even though you can have the same species, there

are lots of shade variants, which is quite interesting. Some

are more... yellowy green and some are slightly reddy brown.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: The patrol have been sweeping their torches

up and down Chalcombe Lane for over an hour. So far, they

haven't seen a single amphibian. Perhaps they won't see any

tonight.

And then...

SHEILA GUNDRY : Oh, we found a newt, quick

LANCE: Trapped in the drain.

ANGELA: Here we go.

LANCE: On the black pipe there, in between the ridges.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: A tiny parmate newt. No more than five

centimetres long, caught on a piece of piping inside the

drain.

ANGELA: Do you want to try and rescue it with the net? So we'll

help it on its way with a little net.

We're just going to try and put the net right below the........

Tthe newt.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Angela and Lance carefully lower the net

down into the drain.

ANGELA: It's wedged itself in between the ridges.

LANCE: It's moving, it's good, right?

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: And then the newt slips from its perch and

falls to the bottom, just out of reach.

ANGELA: Its gone all the way down. I don't know if I'm going

to get it.

This one all the way down.

LANCE: All right.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: This time the team can't rescue the newt, but

they'll come back later tonight and try again.

LANCE: All right, on our way back, we'll check.

Hopefully it will climb back up.

SHEILA GUNDRY : And if it doesn't it'll come back up and

someone else will spot it.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: In the end, that tiny newt is the only

amphibian the patrol will see tonight. The conditions are just

a little too dry and a little too cold. But when the weather

is right, this quiet lane can come alive.

SHEILA GUNDRY : So around the country, there's 156,277 toads

were saved last year. So I love to think of that figure because

it's someone, somewhere in the country has seen a toad and

thought, I need to do something about this and has picked them

up and taken them across the road and saved their lives. And

that's happened 156,277 times last year.

So It's incredible, and it's a bit of a hidden phenomenon in

that not everyone's heard of this, but nevertheless, 156,277

toads were being saved. So it's just little groups of people not

making a big deal about it, but they're going out on wet nights

in the winter, walking up and down and saving toads and frogs

and newts. So, yeah, it's an amazing thing.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Thanks for listening to this episode of

Wild Tales. If you'd like to help wildlife closer to home,

there are a few simple things you can do. Even a tiny wildlife

pond in your garden can create a home for frogs, toads and newts.

And leaving a pile of logs or stones can give them a safe

place to brumate through the winter. If you'd like to join a

toad patrol near you, you can find more details on the Frog

Life website. I'm Ranger Rosie Holdsworth. Thanks for

listening. See you next time.