A volunteer holds a frog to help it over a road near Tallinn on April 23, 2012
Thousands of frogs in Estonia have lived to lay eggs another spring thanks to a battalion of volunteers who carried them across busy roads, organisers said on Thursday.
After hibernating through the Baltic state's bitter-cold winter, frogs hop out onto roads en masse in the spring as they make their way to breeding grounds to lay eggs.
"This is when the trouble starts and we humans need to help them because they often cross busy roads and many of them get crushed under cars," biologist Piret Pappel with Tallinn's Frog NGO told AFP.
"We used buckets to carry 15,677 frogs safely to the other side of the road or closer to where they lay eggs," added Mariliis Tago from the Estonian Fund for Nature.
Around 200 volunteers set up nets in 79 spots across Estonia to catch the amphibians, measuring 8-11 centimetres (three-four inches), where they are known to cross roads.