Please note: 

• Volunteers need to be at least 18 and, due to the nature of this volunteering, it is not suitable for everyone who applies
• Please consider how far you travel for this volunteering role. There are other toad patrols that may be closer (check the Froglife website Toads on Roads (froglife.org)

Patrols are carried out in evening times from the end of February to the beginning of April when weather conditions are favourable. Animals tend to move when it is wet, dark, and above 5ºC

On a toad patrol, volunteers walk up and down a stretch of road in pairs, for up to 2 hours. We wear head-torches, and shine them into the road and on the verge to look for frogs, toads and newts. Any that we find, we pick up using gloves, and put in a bucket. Once we have a few, we release them at a safe spot, as close to their breeding location as possible.

Usually over a season, we would go out somewhere between 10 and 15 times. Due to the weather-dependency of this activity, whether or not we patrol might be decided with quite short notice, sometimes only the day before. Some volunteers only make one patrol in a season and others may come to all.