Help our local toads!
Each spring, during February and March, toads, frogs and newts return to local ponds to breed. Most ponds, including newly installed garden ponds, are likely to be used by frogs and newts but only a few are used by toads, who are faithful to their birth pond. There are several ponds in our group of parishes that have been used by generations of toads, to which they migrate up to a mile or more at night to breed, then back again to their ‘home patch’.
Toads are not fast movers, and this can make them particularly vulnerable to road traffic on migration to and from their pond – as well as crossing roads, they often use stretches of roads and tracks as it’s easier for them to crawl along these than through thick vegetation. Also, male toads will often sit in roads where they can see around them, waiting for a female to grab and hitch a lift to the pond, where they are in ‘pole position’ for fertilising her eggs.
Rookery Pond, near Green Farm west of Hempstead village, is an important breeding pond for toads. Each year local volunteers help thousands of toads to get safely across the road near the pond. Volunteer patrollers don’t need to be available every evening, they work in pairs and usually do one or two 90 minute ‘shifts’ a week on a rota, between dusk and the first couple of hours of darkness, when the weather is suitable for toads to move (relatively mild and damp).
If you might be interested in becoming a local toad patroller at Hempstead, please contact Tim Venes - timvenes01@gmail.com  tel. 07876 322406 to find out more.

You can also help by:

• Being aware of where toad patrols take place during February and March, watch out for warning signs, and drive carefully near these, to help both the toads and the patrollers (there are also patrols nearby at Edgefield, Selbrigg Pond and North Barningham).

• Develop ‘toad awareness’ if you are driving on rural roads at night, especially in February and March, but also any time over the spring and summer, as toads still come out to hunt at night when migration is over. They’re most likely to be out in mild and wet or damp weather. If you drive reasonably slowly and watch the road carefully, you can see them on the road in the car headlights and hopefully avoid them with your wheels.
  Not all local ponds with breeding toads have a patrol – please also be especially careful in early spring near Pond Hills, Hempstead and Plumstead Hall Farm up to Baconsthorpe.

Thank you for helping our local toads!