Sir Edward Grey

                        “An Artist will paint the commonest subject in order to bring out some aspect that has particularly struck him.  So with watchers of birds, some are attracted by a well-known species and some by another.  Thus even those of us who have nothing new to tell may have something fresh to say.”

                                     

Sir Edward Grey, Founder of EGIFO

                        “most important and prolific organisation for scientific field ornithology in Western Europe, the Edward Grey Institute at Oxford University”

Toad Crossing and Maggie Thatcher as a Twinkle.

Migrating Toads

The first signs are the toads appearing on the driveway, all heading in one direction.  They are enroute  to the lake which prior to gravel extraction would no doubt have been a wetland.  They are simultaneously tiny and vulnerable and outrageous.

My daughter, (shame on you) runs away from one perched knowingly on the porch. There is something alien-like about the toads, but despite their cold, warty skin and callous demeanour, I can’t help loving them.

The lane above our house will have been a migratory route for thousands of years.  Long before the road was there, or I was here.  Before David Cameron, Tony Blair, John Major were in office.  Long before Margaret Thatcher was a baby or an embryo, or a twinkle in ther father’s eye, toads were migrating across the road at Bodenham.

Indeed toads were migrating here before Parliament existed, before women got the vote, the man on the street got the vote (which was considerably earlier), before the Chartists and the Enclosures Act and before the Domesday Book. Toads can see in light intensities where humans can’t discern anything.  Periodically, they shed their skin and eat it.  How can we persuade those who don’t get it to love them? Its not going to be easy. x