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.