May 2004 and Frog Spawn Pond Watch.
Please be patient if this page takes a little while to load as I have put fairly high quality photographs on it.
Earlier photos of the frog spawn are available on the on the March 2004 and April 2004 pages.
Well it's May now. There isn't a great deal of change in the tadpoles. They will just continue to grow over the next few weeks. I've had lots of emails from people about their own ponds and tadpoles which have been very interesting to read. I'm obviously not the only one out there fascinated by the subject. We've seen the newts a few times as they seem to like to come up to the surface to sunbathe when it is warm. They're not the only ones - if you've ever wondered why you put a log in a wildlife pond like I have here is at least part of the answer! The log has been covered in sunbathing frogs.
Here's the pond at the beginning of May. There's quite a lot of tadpoles about. As I said above, they haven't changed that much and I couldn't get a decent photo today. I'll add some more when there are some more changes - at the moment they are just little eating machines putting on body weight and avoiding getting eaten by hiding under stones. If you have tadpoles in your pond and a beach it is worth putting some flat stones in the water on top of raised pebbles so that the tadpoles can hide under them. The green thing to the right of the photo is my winter frog house. It is well insulated and sits in the water keeping a hole through the ice and providing a safe haven for any frogs that get caught under the ice. It needs to come out for the winter now and I have just left it on the side of the pond to let any insects escape. I am also hoping that the large number of crevasses between the rocks will provide the newts with plenty of winter hibernating spaces.
This photo was taken on the 4th May and not much has changed since really. There are lots of tadpoles of quite differing sizes swimming around. It's the first year that I haven't been raising them indoors and putting half of them out everytime the tank gets crowded. So in previous years I'd put the differing sizes down to me doing this, but obviously they grow at different rates. They'll probably spend the next few weeks just getting bigger until they start to grow legs.
Well it's not the end of may. The numbers of tadpoles have dropped like mad - I think that this is because the other wildlife has now worked out that they are a good source of food. Judging by some of the emails I have been sent it looks like newts enjoy a nice tadpole as well. Still there's still quite a few tadpoles left and plenty of places for them to hide and they are growing steadily, so I'm sure they'll be some baby frogs next month.
Come back over the next few days and weeks to see the tadpoles grow!! There's now a June 2004 page - better late than never!
Do you like this page? Is it useful? Please email me and let me know. I always say that you can tell that it's spring when the frog spawn emails start to arrive, but I'm always interested in hearing about people's experiences. I get a lot of spam so put something about tadpoles in the title so I can spot people's emails!!
