Walking up Kitto Road SE14 last night, alongside Telegraph Hill upper park, I saw a toad. Then a few metres along another one, and then another. In fact I saw five toads in procession all on the pavement heading up hill in the direction of St Catherine's hurch, where people were queuing to watch the community production of West Side Story. Whether the toads were Sondheim fans or just migrating from one pond to another I cannot say. There is of course a big pond in the lower park, but they would have to make a perilous road crossing to get there. According to Froglife: 'Common Toads are very particular about where they breed and often migrate back to their ancestral breeding ponds each year. They follow the same route, regardless of what gets in their way, which sometimes leads to them crossing roads'. In some parts of the country volunteers have arranged toad patrols to help them cross the road, and I gather that this has sometimes happened here on Kitto Road.
Must admit I did post on twitter that they were frogs, but people there were quick to correct me so unless some amphibian expert tells me otherwise I am going with the Common Toad.
(Just to be clear I love toads and frogs, the reference to 'plague' was a biblical allusion as they were churchbound, not a negative comment!)
I had a look on Froglife's website: http://www.froglife.org/what-we-do/toads-on-roads/
ReplyDeleteToads migrate back to the ponds that they were born in! Other parts of the UK have volunteers who collect the toads and help them cross the road safely. Don't seem to be in London though...