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What our animals are doing this month

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Written by Anastasia Hinchcliffe, Coalface to Wildspace Yorkshire Trainee

Although we now turn from an unseasonably dry spring towards the summer months, plenty is still going on for our amphibians. This month, our focus is on the common toad.

With their mating season generally coming to a close in early spring, adult toads will now be back to spending less time in water, instead favouring dark and damp spots in which to shelter and feed. You may have been lucky enough to see their tadpoles, which differ from those of the common frog in that they are darker (generally black in colour), appear slightly smaller and tend to move around in shoals. Earlier still, you may have seen toad spawn, which appears to be in ribbons rather than clumps and is often wrapped around pond foliage.

toads will now be back to spending less time in water, instead favouring dark and damp spots in which to shelter and feed.

Although their physical progression into adulthood is much the same, toadlets tend to leave the water slightly earlier than froglets and, although still tiny, may now be seen making their mass exodus across grassy banks and footpaths. Unfortunately, their small size makes them easy to step on, so take care to watch your step while out and about!

Preferred spots for toads for the rest of the year include collections of leaf litter, log piles and compost heaps. With toad numbers continually on the decline, making wildlife-friendly choices in gardens is especially important for them. While we have the sun, why not get out in the garden and create your own shady log or rock pile, or even a special Toad Abode? It’s also never too late in the season to dig that pond!

There’s tonnes of other ideas in our ‘Idea Zone’ so whilst the weather is good, get outside and make your green spaces more wildlife-friendly. 

Reptiles and Amphibians in Winter: #WinterWildGardening

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Winter is traditionally a quieter time in the garden, but this is in fact the busiest time of year for habitat management for reptiles and amphibians. As the temperature drops, these animals become dormant, making it safer to clear out ponds and build shelters causing as little disturbance as possible.

For our winter campaign #WinterWildGardening, we have put together some tips and tricks on how you can make our species lives a little bit easier in your gardens and green spaces.

 

How to tackle icy ponds:  

If you have a garden pond, the colder weather can cause it to freeze. The best thing to do is to periodically sweep away any snow so that sunlight can reach your pond plants and produce oxygen. This will help to prevent ‘Winterkill’ which is caused by toxic gases released in the pond (through natural decomposition of dead leaves) and not being able to escape, causing the water to become deoxygenated.

Melting a hole in the ice won’t necessarily affect the amount of oxygen diffusing into the water, but there is no harm in playing it safe! You can gently melt any ice with a cup or pan full of hot water to allow more active animals like newts to move to the surface to breathe.

You can also try floating a small object, e.g., a tennis ball, in the water or keep your fountain going (if you have one) to prevent ice formation.

If you have frog spawn, the upper portions may freeze, but the spawn that is underwater should survive. However, if you have a very small pond and/or it is shallow and prone to freezing throughout, you can temporarily place your frog spawn into a bucket of pond water and place in a garage, or similar place, out of the freezing conditions. 

Remember that moving spawn to other ponds risks spreading disease, so once the cold weather has passed, ensure that you return the spawn to the same pond to allow it to continue to develop.

 

Creating overwintering sites:

Something as simple as a pile of leaves or areas of dense vegetation and scrub close to your garden pond will provide areas for amphibians to take refuge during periods of cold weather.

Log piles and rockeries are another simple idea to provide our species with somewhere to see out the winter months. As well as providing cover from adverse weather, dead wood attracts insects on which reptiles and amphibians will feed.

If you want to go further, you can build a hibernaculum. You can find instructions on how to do this here. 

If you don’t have space to create a hibernaculum, you could consider a toad home. These can be made simply by upturning a plant pot and knocking a hole in the side for a door. Place old leaves or grass inside your toad home for extra protection. You can find instructions on how to build one here.

hibernacula

 

What to do if you disturb a reptile or amphibian during winter:

Reptiles and amphibians lie dormant during the coldest months but will take advantage of milder patches of weather to come out and forage. For this reason, if you do disturb an animal in winter, it should be unharmed if covered up and left undisturbed.

If you are unable to put the animal back where you found it, place it somewhere that offers protection from frost and predators like cats and birds, for example, log piles, under a shed or within your compost heap. It should not be somewhere ‘warm’, just a place that is frost free.

If you spot any of our species out and about, please remember to record them on our free Dragon Finder App. Data from the Dragon Finder App is crucial going forward to monitor the relationship between temperature changes and the behaviours of reptiles and amphibians in the UK.

If you spot any sick or injured reptiles or amphibians, please report them to our partners at the Garden Wildlife Health project.  

 common frog

Further Resources:

For more information on how you can help reptiles and amphibians during winter, check out….

 

What our animals are doing this month

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Written by Charles Bonnett, Transforming Lives Trainee

As the autumn chill sets in and the warm summer days recede, our native amphibians and reptiles begin the next chapter of their yearly journey: seeking shelter in which to overwinter.

Our reptiles and amphibians are ‘ectothermic’, which refers to their inability to produce their own body heat, instead depending on external sources to regulate their body temperature. This differs from ‘endothermic’ animals – such as mammals – who are able to internally regulate their own body temperature despite changing external conditions.

This ectothermic, cold-blooded characteristic means that, as the autumn sets in, seeking shelter to protect themselves from the cold climate is of primary importance. It is during this period that amphibians and reptiles enter a state of reduced physiological activity, known as ‘brumation.’ This state of dormancy is similar to hibernation, in that both involve extended periods of reduced activity to control energy consumption; however, whilst hibernating animals enter a deep sleep for the duration of the dormancy, brumation includes periods of intermittent activity through warmer periods.

Amphibians mostly overwinter on land, though a minority may choose to do so in water. They can achieve this amazing feat due to the permeability of their skin, through which they can absorb water and oxygen; this permeability, however, means that amphibians require a moist environment. Amphibians may overwinter in abandoned mammal burrows, compost heaps, loose soil, under rocks, or the bottom of ponds. Reptiles prefer dryer environments in which to overwinter; this may include unused mammal burrows, dead tree stumps, or leaf litter.

There are many ways you can help our amphibians and reptiles as the chill arrives:

  • Build a hibernaculum to provide shelter for overwintering.
  • Prepare your garden to support any reptiles and amphibians which may visit.
  • Record any sightings on our free Dragon Finder App; any data is useful to help further understand the complex relationship between temperature and behaviour.

Book Review: One Garden against the World- in search of hope in a changing climate by Kate Bradbury

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Written by Roger Downie, Froglife and University of Glasgow

After obtaining a degree in politics, then training in horticulture, Kate Bradbury has become a busy wildlife/gardening writer (newspapers, magazines and books- this is her sixth book since 2017) and broadcaster, including on BBC’s Springwatch. Among her many roles, she is a Patron of Froglife, so supporters of Froglife will not be surprised that an enthusiasm for amphibians and reptiles is a theme of the book, and may be aware of one of her previous books, How to Create a Wildlife Pond (2021).

One Garden is Kate’s second memoir, following The Bumblebee Flies Anyway- a memoir of love, loss and muddy hands (2019). In the acknowledgements section, she writes that the book has been ‘challenging to write’, but the reader would hardly be aware of that, given the apparently easy conversational style and chatty asides to her dog Tosca,  the hedgehogs that visit her garden, the frogs, plants and her partner Emma. So this is an entertaining, inspiring and informative read.

After a prologue summarizing the twin/linked biodiversity and climate crises, including continuing habitat mismanagement in towns (over-zealous mowing; tree removal) and gardens (plastic grass; excessive paving), Kate introduces her own small urban garden in Portslade-by-Sea, near Brighton on the edge of the South Downs. The rest of the book covers her actions, interactions, experiences and thoughts over the period of April 2022 to June 2023 in 15 monthly chapters, each starting with an attractive wildlife drawing by Abby Cook, and ending with a short account of the natural history of a species found in her garden: ten insects such as the wool carder bee, the common backswimmer, and four others such as the slow-worm.

Each month she describes the work she does in the garden aimed at providing and protecting wildlife and enhancing biodiversity: bird feeders; seed sowing and seedling transplantation; hedgehog food and refuge provisioning; robin nest protection etc. She also covers the observations she makes and attempts to explain the sometimes puzzling behaviour of some species. She spends hours using her binoculars to follow the mating frenzies of frogs in her pond and the nest-building of a family of robins (when does she get any writing done?). There are also attempts to encourage others in her neighbourhood to look after wildlife, often via social media: a man repairing his roof is persuaded to provide swift boxes; a group campaigns against a man (‘drone bastard’) who is trying to dissuade gulls from nesting on his roof by flying a drone at them; others look out for hedgehogs that are struggling to find food in a drought.

Kate claims to be a reluctant protestor, only occasionally taking part in national climate change actions, but she certainly makes up through the practical local steps she takes that can make a difference. The main themes are climate change- constant worries over heat and drought effects on wildlife, especially hedgehogs, birds and insects. Indeed, in my view correctly, a big part of the book is on insect population and species declines and their cascading effects  on everything else. Her June 2023 chapter includes a howl of anguish at the attitudes she reports from friends, relatives and acquaintances over climate change, from denial to complacency (it’ll be good for us; our weather has always been variable; ‘they’ will find a solution).

The book’s subtitle is ‘in search of hope’: did she find it? I’ve been involved in environmental campaigning since the 1970s, and am finding it very hard to be hopeful: we seem to have to fight the same battles over and over, and are cursed with political leaders who refuse to take the environmental crises seriously. Kate’s approach, that individuals can make a difference, certainly has value, but we need structures that work with the natural environment, not against it. I would take issue with one of Kate’s sentences in her final chapter (which outlines actions people can take in their own gardens): she writes: ‘Climate change has not been caused by us but by big business, by oil giants, by capitalism’. There is an understandable tendency to think in terms of us (blameless) and them (the villains). But too many of us rush happily to buy the latest planet-damaging stuff and have the attitudes she clearly describes in her June chapter. We need to look at ourselves, and change our behaviour , because we are, collectively, to blame.

One Garden against the World- in search of hope in a changing climate by Kate Bradbury, Bloomsbury (2024); £18.99, hardback.

Preparing for Spring

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Written by Ellia Cobb, Transforming Lives Trainee. 

It’s almost springtime again! Reptiles and amphibians will be getting ready to come out of their brumation and begin their breeding season, so what can you do to help them? If you have a wildlife pond at home it is important to finish up any pond maintenance you might want to do before the weather starts to warm up. Disturbing breeding and egg-laying amphibians can be very harmful, so ensuring good pond maintenance is essential.

Preparing your wildlife pond for spring is a simple task as they don’t require much work. Cutting back reed and grass from the pond if it is too overgrown to allow more sunlight in can hugely benefit the pond, but remember to leave enough for the breeding amphibians! Another thing you can do is remove leaf litter and sediment build up from the pond to prevent a decrease in the water quality, but this should be done before spring. Anything that is removed should be left by the pond for a few days just in case any wildlife remains inside of it, this gives them time to make their way back to the water (please see our Just Add Water guide for further tips). 

Newts need vegetation to lay their eggs and toads and frogs need a safe place to lay their spawn away from predators.

The changing weather can be quite confusing for amphibians so it isn’t uncommon for them to start breeding earlier than expected, so don’t be alarmed if you spot any spawn or eggs quite early on. You do not need to move or disturb them. Newts need vegetation to lay their eggs and toads and frogs need a safe place to lay their spawn away from predators, so providing native pond plants and safe places for them to hide before spring starts is the best idea.

As for reptiles bramble, compost heaps, log piles, gorse and wooded areas are all places they may choose to breed in. This means that any garden maintenance shouldn’t be done during this time to prevent disturbance and endangerment.

You can find further information on how to make your gardens more wildlife friendly in our Idea Zone. 

 

How can you help wildlife this winter?

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Written by Ellia Cobb, Transforming Lives Trainee.

As the weather is getting colder and the temperature starts to drop, reptiles and amphibians are getting ready for brumation. Brumation is similar to hibernation in that it is a state of deep sleep undergone throughout the colder months as they cannot survive winter conditions. Amphibians and reptiles will however come out to forage during warmer periods. 

There are different things you can do at this time of year to help brumating animals such as building your own hibernaculum or creating a log pile. Creating a hibernaculum is simple and if you have leftover garden waste from the summer, this is a great use for it!

You start by digging a hole, it doesn’t have to be too wide or deep, just enough to retain heat to keep reptiles and amphibians warm. Once you have done this, you can start filling the hole with logs, rocks and bricks. Once you have filled some of the hole, you can start piling the larger logs and sticks a little higher than ground level to then cover with softer things such as leaf litter and bramble (these help to trap the warmth). Finally, you can use the mud you dug up to then cover up the hibernaculum, remembering to leave some gaps so that the animals can get in and out. 

If you don’t like the idea of digging, log piles can be just as effective by stacking logs, branches, rocks and leaf litter. This also makes a great habitat for brumating reptiles and amphibians.

 

It is super important not to disturb compost heaps, log piles or even piles of leaves during the colder months.

More Ideas:

You can find even more resources and ideas for making your green space more wildlife-friendly here.