Report from the Townsend Tigersnakes - 26/02/11

Townsend Tigersnakes 25th and 26th Feb


The Townsend Tigersnakes have had a BIG weekend!

We popped out to Brooms Head on Friday night and scooped up 109 toads in 35mins at the Bowling Club!! Awesome.

Saturday night we needed to get our quota for the DNA study so we hit Townsend. What a great night, Mel and Jared started at Townsend and scored 47 toads in less than an hour! That seemed like a teaser so Torsten and I joined them and we went out to Red Cliff for a drive thru. We stayed on the roads the whole time and they were just everywhere, we ended up getting 201 toads on a full circuit of Red Cliff.

It was a bumper weekend for us with 357 toads caught all up! Yay!

Now its time to have a rest so we can do it all again next week.

Cheers

Jo, Mel, Jared and Torsten.

Mel and Jared compare toads. Photo: Jo Vestergaard.

These large cane toads were found in the Townsend area Feb 2011. Photo: Jo Vestergaard.

Townsend Tiger Snakes launch assault

Jo and Mel are proving to be a force to be reckoned with and I think there would be many toads quaking in their little amphibian flippers in the Townsend area. These girls attended and helped out at the Yamba Roundup Sunday 20th Feb (oh the humidity!) and then dropped into Carrs Drive on the way home for a little more toadin'!! 13 toads picked up there. They then went out wednesday 23/02 and picked up 8 toads in the Townsend area,  Toads - you have been warned. The Townsend Tigersnakes are out of the bag.

New CIA member Mel's son ready for action at the Yamba Roundup.

Toadbust 8 - 5/02/11 - Townsend

Well, the planets finally aligned and Jo V and I were able to go out on the same night at Townsend, such a critical area of cane toad expansion. We bagged 51 cane toads, including some large 3 yo males and females, but more importantly, it was an excellent reconnaisance mission for us both to set Jo up to run her own toadbusts and also to meet new landholders and discover new areas where the cane toads might be breeding in that bush area between the cemetery and Gardiners Rd.

Jo V inspects a large male cane toad found in the Townsend area.

The biggest win of the night was the motorcross bike crew having a race day planned for Sunday, thus there were many willing cane toad busters that night who were camped Saturday night. The thousands of tyres surrounding the (awesomely fun-looking!) bike track are providing excellent daytime hides for the cane toads but on a good note, we did not find any evidence of toads using the water hole at the bike track (lots of noisy Peron's Tree Frogs though).

We then headed to George's place and bagged the other half of our toads. Grossest moment of the night was Jo finding a heap of cane toads gathered on top of an old roo carcass, feasting on the bugs. Eeewww.

Both being snake people, we were most disappointed to not see any snakes because boy, was it humid! We both said we reckon we lost 5 kgs that night! Thanks Jo. Go forth in Townsend and kick some toad butt.

Cheers, Sharon.