This is the time of year for one of Britain’s greatest wildlife phenomena. Each year thousands of toads come out of hibernation and waddle off to breed in their ancestral ponds, and their urge to migrate is so powerful that they often follow the same route no matter what gets in the way, even crossing roads en masse.
The trigger for the mass migration is warm, wet nights, often in drizzling rain and warmer than 5C, as well as lengthening days. The toads tend to start moving around dusk and continue well into the night if it stays mild enough, and in ideal conditions there can be a spectacular surge of toads, usually the males first.
But in Britain the numbers of the common toad, Bufo bufo, have suffered greatly in recent times and their annual migrations have led to huge numbers of casualties from traffic on the roads. More than 20 years ago villagers in Oxton in Nottinghamshire were so appalled by the carnage, they arranged for their local council to close a lane to traffic on a toad migration route, giving about 1,000 of the amphibians safe passage.
The road closure was possibly the first of its kind in the world and over the years has been repeated in many other parts of the UK, co-ordinated by the charity Froglife with their Toads on Roads project.
Reports of mass toad casualties are used to apply to local councils to get road warning signs put up on toad crossings, asking motorists to take care. Froglife also helps local toad patrols manned by volunteers, who carry the creatures to safety.
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The number of migrating toads varies each year and in 2021 Froglife recorded over 81,000 toads being helped at 177 road crossings in Britain. The locations of the crossings and details of the Toads on Roads project are on the Froglife website (froglife.org).
In folklore, toads predict rain. “If toads come out of their holes in great numbers, rain will fall soon,” one saying goes, and when a toad is browner than usual, expect rain.
