frogspawn

[Hoy]

I haven't seen a frog round here in ten years

Do you want some? I have a streetfull of nice, flat ones. Easy to pack and mail.    

They will be flatpack then ... presumably croaked?   

Yes, croaked but not crooked or easily shuffled off.

[Roma]

Four clusters of frogspawn in my ponies' water hole yesterday.  Don't think they eat it. 
At the Cruickshank Garden a pair of mallards appeared every year about the time the frogs spawned but there were so much spawn they didn't manage to eat it all

[angie]

Hi Roma

I can just imagine your ponies looking down at all these wiggly things. My pond is starting to fill up and today the herons started to appear.

Angie

[jomowi]

I haven't seen a frog round here in ten years

Do you want some? I have a streetfull of nice, flat ones. Easy to pack and mail.    

They will be flatpack then ... presumably croaked?   

Yes, croaked but not crooked or easily shuffled off.

Seeing the above reminds me to tell you that I am an unwitting toad murderess.  If you are squeamish don't read on.......  Toads like to keep cool in the sand plunge in the greenhouse which is next to the front door.  In warm weather the outer front door is fastened back to let more sunlight into the house.  On closing it one evening there was resistance and a crunching noise.  Being in a hurry, I thought little of it at the time.  Imagine my horror when a few days later I opened the front door again and noticed a by now fossilised toad in the rebate. 

[wooden shoe]

See the proud mother/father with her spawn. It's sitting there for 3 days now. Every once and a while some other frogs will join it.
This is the brown frog, Rana temporaria. The idea of Mark is not new. In the Netherlands exists a network of amateurs who keep track of first sights each year. See the results at the "natuurkalender" http://www.natuurkalender.nl//waarnemingen/default-analyse.asp, choose left "amfibie" (amphibia) and then either "bruine kikker" (Rana temporaria), "gewone pad" (Bufo bufo), "groene kikker" (Pelophylax sp), or "kleine watersalamander" (Lissotriton vulgaris). And for the language specialists: yes indeed pad = puddock = padde = Pfad and so on.

[wooden shoe]

extra info: in the bottom selecter choose "eerste eieren" (first eggs) instead of "eerste individu in water" (first individual in water).

[mark smyth]

The spawn from the start of this thread is now tadpoles
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOlajYnsgyU[/youtube]

[Lesley Cox]

Takes them a while then, to move out into the larger pond area?

[mark smyth]

Yes Lesley. Where the frogs laid their eggs is very shallow about finger deep. The tadpoles stay in the warm shallow area before moving out to the main pond