Over the last 6 weeks or so I and a group of other volunteers have been out most mornings and evenings and have moved just over 4,400 toads across a lane in Suffolk to their breeding ponds. Last year there were 1718 of them, the vast bulk of which moved in around a fortnight, the year before that, there were around 800, and the year before than around 400.
This year peaked with over 1,000 toads moved in a single evening, but when the temperature in over 6°C, and the weather is suitable otherwise, they are still coming: 84 last Friday evening, just before it turned cold again, and I expect they will be moving again when it warms up a little in the next day or two. When is it going to stop, I wonder? How many more are there still to come? The crossing volunteers are flagging.
The toad population is expanding to fill the habitat available in a couple of recently created nature reserves and, ye gods, do I hope that they'll fill it soon! I don't want to spend each morning and evening next spring moving another 10,000 or how ever many there will be.
There isn't actually much traffic down the lane concerned - and some nights not a single vehicle passes - but what there is includes some large tankers going to a sewage works at the end, and a single one of these has, in the past, wiped out over 100 toads. We've lost over 60 in a single night as it is, even with the intensive patrolling that we're doing. Nonetheless, we've kept casualties down to below 10% this year, and managed to get the local Water company to minimise its tanker movements at sensitive times (Anglian water are pretty good like that really).
It isn't helped by increases in traffic caused by incorrect Sat-Nav maps. Several Sat-Nav systems which use Navteq maps have got this lane listed as a convenient cut through to a major junction, but it isn't: it's a dead-end (and only actually a bridleway, in reality - so the highways agency won't put an official no-through-road sign at the end, since it isn't actually a road). I've reported this to Navteq and a couple of the individual Sat-Nav companies, but it'll take a while to have any effect, even if they do actually act on the report at all.
I've been quite keen to keep a fairly accurate report of the numbers crossing partly because the area from which a large proportion of the toads are coming, and in which they must be overwintering has outline planning permission, and should this actually end up being built on, the colony will suffer not only a major loss of hibernaculae, but also pollution of their breeding ponds - since the potential development site drains into the ponds - and also, of course, increased road and pedestrian traffic, dogs, and all the rest that goes with it.
It seems very difficult to get other accurate figures against which to compare our colony's size however: even the county ecologist can do no better that list this one as "huge" compared to most others.
So, does anyone else have any toad crossing figures, or tales to add?
sadly many were squashed 
....now some 22 yrs later i have severe athritis...cannot hardly walk 
so could not do it....BUT would luv too 
so recently made enquiries about that same pond .as a friend offered to take me back and look from the sidelines 
Marion 
Linear Mode
