Eleanor’s Blog – Week 2
Hello! I have had an exciting second week at London T.O.A.D! Read on to see what I’ve been up to!
As part of my university studies, I have to write a report on something I’ve been doing whilst on placement, so I have chosen to do this on my personal project, of revisiting the ponds created and restored during the London Dragon Finder.
Then on Tuesday, I read through the script for the Toad Tails school sessions preparing for next week when I will be joining Emily at the first session. This is really exciting as it’s a great way to get children involved and to help them understand what happens when habitats get destroyed.
Later on in the week, I spoke to Laurence who told me about a research project he had in mind for me. He sent me the data from Toads on Roads, which I am going to organise into easy to read tables containing the numbers of toads saved in each county which will then be shown on a map. This will be a great document to show to people, as it is a good indication of how important the project is for toad populations. This project will certainly keep me busy, as Toads on Roads has been going for over 40 years, so there’s plenty of data!
On Thursday, I finally went out sampling for my pond project. I decided to go to a borough with multiple sites present to make travelling worthwhile, so I chose Richmond upon Thames. I planned out how I would access the four sites, and which order I would visit them. That was the easy part! Upon arrival, I completely underestimated the size of some of the sites so on more than one occasion I found myself a bit lost! Luckily online maps came to my rescue and I found my way. Although I didn’t manage to find all the ponds I had set out to survey on that day, I managed to sample three ponds. The problems I faced have also helped me to plan my day surveying better for next time!
Here is a photo I took of a pond Froglife created at Barnes Common. The pond is set well back from the main path of the nature reserve, meaning it took a while for me to find but there is hardly any disturbance!
Today I have been inputting my survey data from yesterday into an Excel spreadsheet, ready for the next lot of surveys next week! I will also continue going through the Toads on Roads data. Lastly, I am going to prepare for activities next week, including further surveys and where I am going to go next, and ensure I know everything I need to know for the first T.O.A.D Tails school session on Tuesday!
I hope you enjoyed reading about my week!