West Wickham Commons Newsletter – February 2018
4th February 2018
Fires at Three Halfpenny Woods
4th February 2018
TOADS ARE IN TROUBLE!
Toad populations in SE England have fallen by more than 50% since 1985. Toads live most of their lives on land in scrubby areas, hibernating in log piles, deep leaf litter and burrows. In February they emerge and return to their ponds to breed. Please let us know if you see one! We are particularly interested in finding ponds where they breed so please look out for ribbons of eggs around pond plants or male and females together in February-March.
E-mail the date, place (postcode or grid reference), number seen and if possible a photo to Bromley Biodiversity Partnership at bromleybiodiversity@gmail.com
Your information will enable habitat improvements to be put in place to try & increase toad numbers.
How You Can Help Toads: have a wild area in your garden with some scrub, a log pile and maybe a pond with at least one sloping side. For more information & to see how frogs look different from toads, see here.
3 Comments
Hi
I read some information about ‘Toads in in Trouble’ in Bromley Friends of the Earth’s newsletter.
While we were in the garden this morning we saw an adult toad beween our Barrel ponds at about 2pm (Sunday 18th February). There was also something else in the undergrowth which we could not see – maybe another toad. We usually have lots of frogspawn (not yet this year) because the ponds are popular with frogs all year round.
We do not use slug pellets or other chemicals that damage wildlife. We are at 36 Pine Avenue, West Wickham, BR4 0LW
frog or toad? seen in lower end of silver lane opp school
jumped across pavement from kerb/road
I think it went through fence into rear garden
around 17:55 Monday 20 feb
Found a toad in front garden in Silver Lane in April, put it in our pond in back garden