Well we’re two weeks in and already the rollercoaster of 2013 has started, we’ve been having some luck finding some of our missing frogs, but there has also been a bit of bad news relating to one of our frogs.

Good news first – as a result of searching some new areas in the release site we ended up stumbling across some eye shine belonging to one of our missing frogs! The new site is another ghaut adjacent to Sweetwater, and after several repeated visits we’ve even worked out a way of getting into there that doesn’t involve getting scratched, scraped and ripped to pieces by the undergrowth! As such walking this ghaut has now become a part of our standard routine, and recently whilst walking it looking for missing frogs we discovered another missing frog, so definitely a ghaut worth adding to the list! However, having said that soon after finding the ghaut, one of the frogs disappeared from it, to be found 240m away at Hope’s Pond, the point where it was originally released! Just proving the frogs are bouncing round loads, no wonder they are difficult to find. We’ve also had another frog knowingly move around 280m in a night during this release; they’re keeping us on our toes!

Now for the not so good news – a couple of weeks ago we discovered one of our frogs at release site three was starting to show symptoms of chytrid, the deadly fungal disease. A week later unfortunately this frog died of its symptoms. This is the difficult part of conducting these releases and working with such a deadly disease but hopefully all the incredible and unique data we collect from all these frogs will help us come up with some answers that will allow us to manage the species and lead to a mountain chicken recovery instead of possible extinction if left alone in the wild. Thankfully this is the first and only one of our frogs from this release to display any symptoms of chytrid so far and all our other frogs continue to look healthy and bounce around.

Last night, whilst out surveying, we had some extra company from the staff at the Montserrat Reef Project (www.montserratreefproject.com) and staff from Coral Cay Conservation (www.coralcay.org) who were visiting the island and took an interest in the frogs.  Everybody got to see a couple of demonstrations of the frogs being tracked and swabbed for chytrid and learn more about the disease that is not only affecting the mountain chickens but amphibians all around the world. From our end it was great to have some extra company in the forest, especially with people who were so interested in the project, so thank you very much for coming out!

It’s almost the end of Helena & my time out here which is a little scary thinking that three months have passed so quickly – we’ve still got a lot to do before we leave, not to mention our final blog (next week), but I think it’s safe to say we’ve both had a brilliant time so thank you to everybody for a wonderful few months.

Best wishes to all,

– Emma Downie, Volunteer