Wildlife Highlight: Common Frog
Valentines Day frogs!
It was great to see breeding frogs in the pond again, appropriately enough on Valentines Day, and several more over the coming days. They seem especially active over night as when my dad shone a light over the water there was a writhing mass of them. Rather mysteriously there doesn't seem to be any frogspawn yet so I don't quite know what's happened there. I was worried that maybe we had disturbed them a bit too much, but that doesn't really add up. I did a bit of reading and found that lack of light can stop the spawn developing properly which is possible with our pond as it's quite close to the hedge. I think the most likely answer is the spawn is in deeper water so we can't see it yet. I also read that the spawn sinks when first laid only rising to the surface when swelled with water. If anyone has any ideas please do let me know. Hopefully we'll still get lots of tadpoles like last year!
Here's an image I took from last years frogspawn!
Last year we had lots of frogspawn which was great to see and watch it develop! It was highlighted on Winterwatch this year that frogs seem to be spawning earlier each year which is yet another affect of climate change. Since putting in the pond in my Surrey garden the frogs have been pretty consistently spawning around late February. I know that in some cases the frogs time it a bit too early and get caught out by a sudden cold spell with lethal consequences, but that hasn't been the case here thankfully. They are great creatures to watch and even a small pond can make a difference. Watching the spawn turn from tadpoles to frogs is a great way to get children involved and interested in nature. If you're thinking about putting in a pond do let me know I would love to hear from you! There's also lots of advice out there not least Joel Ashton who I mentioned last time. If you check out his YouTube channel Wild Your Garden there's loads on pond building.
With our Norfolk wildlife garden project everything continues to move forward so more on that very soon!
Comentarios