From up here we can see right across the Allen valley, the far fells dark as rain clouds move through a wide expanse of sky. Rushes grow thickly either side of the stony track and mosses gleam the colour of a golden plover’s back. The birds themselves are calling, fluting and mournful, returned here to breed from their wintering at the coast.
As we near the upland pond, a pair of mallards fly up. This shallow expanse of water, fed by a little burn the width of a ditch, transforms in spring from a quiet solitary place into a noisy rave of mating amphibians. Frogs have been here already, their black-centred spawn lying in jellied lumps. It is now the turn of the toads. Migrating back to their ancestral pond after hibernating on the moor, they travel up to 2km, a journey of several days. Half-covered in murk and weed, they hang in the water, limbs splayed, slow-moving on this cold day.
It is temperature that triggers their mass return but, with recent nights close to freezing, the migration has halted. Judging by their small size, these seem to be males; they couple languidly in half-hearted embraces. Croaks emanate from a reedy island, low vibrations like the purring of a big cat. Today there are hundreds of toads, but last year there were many thousands, clambering and scrambling over each other, the larger females squeezed tight in a jumble of limbs, their spawn lying in long strands.
The breeze drives black stipples across the water’s surface as I crouch down to photograph a toad. Close up, I study its metallic eye, a ring of bronze with copper flecks surrounding an oval of blackness. A bulge behind its ear is the parotoid gland, from which it can ooze a milky venom for protection. Its lined skin is knobbled with warts, chocolate-brown markings on tan-coloured skin. After the spring mating, it will return to the moors, hiding under stones, to come out at night to hunt. As showers sweep in and the afternoon cools, he will have to wait a bit longer for the females to arrive and the intensity to begin.
