It’s 5:20am. The morning hasn’t yet begun to lighten, and this is the point. The toads stranded at the barrier will be vulnerable to attack and predation if they are left exposed in daylight hours. Now is the time to collect the stragglers, those that moved after the evening shift of volunteers reluctantly returned to their beds. 

As we pull up on the side of the road with our hi-vis jackets, the headlight beams catch the familiar pale silhouette of a female common toad, labouring her way across the tarmac a few metres ahead, weighed down by a possessive male two thirds of her weight. I get out of the car, but a light from approaching headlights is growing. It’s a lorry, too close for me to risk throwing myself in front of it. I look away as it passes, partly to avoid dazzling the diver with my head torch, partly so I don’t have to see.

A rush of wheels, a doppler cry of air, and the moment passes. I take a second to recover from the headlight dazzle. A heartbeat, two.

The silhouette takes another step, the hormonal drive to return to the pond of her birth recovering her from the shock. I exhale. 

I approach rapidly and scoop her up, the protesting male on her back uttering a possessive squeak, operating on the working assumption that I’m the biggest competitor for her affections that he could have ever imagined. They go in the bucket as the distant rumble of a second vehicle grows, approaching on the side of the road they were heading to.

I take a few more steps as the headlights grow, my stomach sinking as the beam of my headtorch mingles with the approaching headlights to illuminate another, smaller figure. A lone male, migrating under his own steam to the pond, without the audacity to expect an already heavily gravid female to bear him.

Again, I avert my eyes, the rush, the following calm.

I look back, I wait. But there is nothing, no movement to draw the eye. The sad, pale form lies stretched on the tarmac, inches from success, inches from sanctuary. He is still, but perfect, the gold leaf flecked blackness of his eyes still gleaming in the artificial light that illuminates the body. But he’s gone, in a single, swift moment that the driver will never acknowledge, or probably even be aware of. 

The barman in my soul adds a little more fluid to the cocktail shaker and gives it a mix. It’s a bitter fluid, part grief, part rage, part impotent frustration, with a tendency to occasionally erupt in bouts of tears or poorly aimed anger. I should have been there; I could have helped. It’s a sentiment that I feel ringing through the landscape, with every passing year that I see fewer butterflies, every year a visit to an old nature haunt finds it emptier, quieter. 

I should have been there. I could have helped.

I carefully, venerably move the lifeless form out of the road. It feels wrong to leave him to disintegrate under the wheels of passing cars and, anyway, the kites will collect him at first light. I don’t want them at risk too. 

I remember that, other than the drivers, we are the only two people in the landscape. I’ll be home before my alarm goes off. I refine my thought process: I am here. I am helping. 

By the time the sun has risen, we have moved hundreds of amphibians across the road, all potential casualties, all averted. These are hundreds among thousands of saved lives, now rolling and wresting as reproductive balls in the breeding pond, a squeaking, kicking mass creating new life. They won’t all make it back, exhaustion and predation will take their toll, but the hi-vis jackets and sweeping torches will be there on their return journey, making sure that as many as possible survive the perilous crossing to risk it all again next year. 

It's as simple as that. These animals are alive thanks to the efforts put in by local volunteers through the dusk and through the dawn.

In that dawn, my torchlight caught the eye of a hare, pressed down in camouflaged form a few metres from me. As the light grew, a barn owl drifted over the fields, silently scanning for voles. And always, once the sun had crested the horizon, the inquisitive glances and the laughter of kites, sweeping in like valkyries to clear the fallen amphibians from the tarmac, converting toad into kite. Nothing in nature is wasted.

For a moment, watching the pale form of the owl as a mistle thrush mournfully pipes at the apex of a nearby tree, it feels like nature is watching. We’ve done it so much harm, we need to do so much to make amends. It can feel overwhelming. But I always drink the soul cocktail when the barman offers it. In a strange way, I need the grief and I need the anger. They never go away, but you can master them, use them to motivate you.

In these mornings, sensing nature rise to the challenge of a new day, you are reminded what you are fighting for.

I am here. I’m going to help.

How can I help?