Dirty Doins in the Dunes
On Saturday evening we went on the Sefton Ranger Service's Natterjack Toad Walk starting out from their base at the Ainsdale Discovery Centre . Even as we met at 9pm the sounds of these small toads calling from the slacks could be heard .
Natterjacks love shallow pools , or scrapes , rather than the deeper ponds favoured by Common Toads and Frogs, and the best place to encounter them on the Sefton coast are the Birkdale and Ainsdale dunes .
Natterjacks , which crawl rather than hop , are a threatened species and can only be handled by people with the appropriate licence . They can easily be differentiated from their common cousins by the characteristic yellow stripe down their backs . The males attract the females by inflating a throat sac the size of a golf-ball and producing a rattling croak that can be heard up to a mile away . This led to them being referred to as " The Birkdale Nightingale " .
Dirty Doins in the Dunes
On Saturday evening we went on the Sefton Ranger Service's Natterjack Toad Walk starting out from their base at the Ainsdale Discovery Centre . Even as we met at 9pm the sounds of these small toads calling from the slacks could be heard .
Natterjacks love shallow pools , or scrapes , rather than the deeper ponds favoured by Common Toads and Frogs, and the best place to encounter them on the Sefton coast are the Birkdale and Ainsdale dunes .
Natterjacks , which crawl rather than hop , are a threatened species and can only be handled by people with the appropriate licence . They can easily be differentiated from their common cousins by the characteristic yellow stripe down their backs . The males attract the females by inflating a throat sac the size of a golf-ball and producing a rattling croak that can be heard up to a mile away . This led to them being referred to as " The Birkdale Nightingale " .