14 on the Air, Still looking for a few more toads

Toad 21 being released after getting fitted with his winter transmitter

It has been a busy start for our telemetry study this fall.  In the past 2 weeks we have found 17 toads and fit them all with small temporary transmitters.  Two toads have slipped their belts and were nowhere to be seen when we went to locate them for one of their weekly check-ins.  All we found was the transmitter hiding in some vegetation.  We have also removed one belt from a small male, as we need to try and even out the distribution of our study sample throughout the project area.  We had three toads on one property and we decided to only follow the larger female at this site. Because this female is much larger than some of our males, we have been able to fit her with a 9 month transmitter which will hopefully take us through the winter and well into spring, as long as she does not slip out of her belt too. At present we have 14 toads on the air and we are continuing to search for more adult toads for our hibernation study. Our goal is to have 15 on the air throughout the fall and winter.

We would like to give a shout out to some of our Toadally Awesome volunteers.  

Finding toads for our study is a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack. There are several things that make finding toads a little challenging: they are mostly nocturnal, they prefer to hunker down during the day under vegetation or in other hiding places; they have excellent camouflage and they are relatively small compared to other wildlife.  Last year we found 8 toads by driving along roads on dark, and usually rainy nights.  This year we have been fortunate to have some great volunteers looking for toads on their properties and calling us when they find one.  We have been able to fit these animals with belts and then release them back where we found them.  It will be interesting to see if the toads from peoples' gardens behave any differently from those that we have found associated with road edges.

Special thanks goes out to Darren and Wendy, Rose, Morris and Corrin, Lisa, Arlene, Cherie, Helen, and Susan (don't worry you will find one Susan).

Here are some of our volunteers 

with their toads

Arlene with toad 22, aka "Teddy"

Toad 22 was found on the road in front of Arlene's house on Sept.18th.  He moved to the back of Arlene's property and has spent the past 7 days in an old, decaying stump under a large maple tree.  A perfect place to hide during the day and forage at night.  

Cherie with toad 24, aka Prince Charming

Toad 24 was found by volunteer Cherie, while she was out working in her beautiful garden on Sept. 21st. We fit him with a transmitter that afternoon and released him where he was first seen.  We went back to Cherie's garden on Sept 24th to check on Prince Charming and he hadn't moved far, less than 5 meters from where we released him.

If you see a toad in your yard, please catch it and place it in a large bucket with a tight fitting lid with air holes.  Make sure to have some moist leafy vegetation in the bottom of the bucket.  Call us right away and we will come to see if your toad can be part of our study. We are especially interested in toads from the western side of our study area (see the map below).