Give amphibians a helping hand
As our wild landscape becomes more efficiently farmed and cultivated for building, less of it is available for our frogs, toads and newts to thrive in. Lovely large, naturally formed ponds used to be 10 a penny but are now few and far between, so it falls to our gardens to step up to the plate as prime habitat.
I’d go so far as to say that, farmland management aside, everyone with a garden is responsible for the future welfare of our charming amphibians. They’re starting to spawn at the moment, so keep an eye on your pond for strings and clumps of dotted jelly – toads lay long strings of spawn while frogs lay clumps. Smooth-skinned, mottled brown frogs look different to stout toads with warty skin, shorter legs and variable skin colour. Did you know that frogs tend to leap whereas toads hop? Also, another way to decide which froggy friend you’ve got in your garden is to check back on the spawn in a few weeks – if the tadpoles are a brownish, mottled olive colour you’ve got frogs; if the tadpole tiddlers are still jet black, congratulations, you’ve got toads!
The last of these colourful characters are newts – my favourite, if only for their graceful, splayed fingers. Great crested newts are the snazziest, with punky crests and hot orange and black blobs along the underside of their bellies, but the more demure brown palmate newts are most common. Newt populations are strictly protected by law, and it’s actually an offence to destroy a newtpopulated pond, or even to put fish in a pond that newts use.
Alongside bats, amphibians are sentinel species, or ‘canaries in the coalmine’, as ecologists often put it. This means their thriving presence implies the area in question is a wholesome, healthy habitat, but once environmental problems occur they’ll be the first species to get their coats and take off, demonstrate signs of ill health or, worse still, die off. So if you’re lucky enough to host a few of these charismatic critters, your garden’s a good ‘un!
The very best thing you can do for amphibians is pop in a small pond of 1m (3¼ft) squared at least – they use them to spawn and some overwinter in them for shelter. Secondary to this is providing extra shelter, as many like to hibernate outside of ponds, mainly under hedges, stones or in compost heaps, but I’ve got a new Frogilo to add to my garden, a summer and winter shelter that can provide them (or other animals for that matter) with protection from predators. Place it near a damp area or next to a pond in a cool, shady, quiet spot and you may just spot some happy residents.