Frog Spawn a Plenty

A short video. There are lots of frogs and heaps of frog spawn in the overgrown garden pond.

Wooer

A second area of the pond is now filled with frog spawn. Most of the frogs dive under water when I go near but one was brave enough to stay put while I took a photo:



So far this year I haven't seen any of the newts.

Gone A-Wooing

A frog he would a-wooing go,
Heigh ho! says Rowley,
A frog he would a-wooing go,
Whether his mother would let him or no.
With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach,
Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.



After hearing some croaking from the pond this morning I could see that the local frogs had definitely gone a-wooing.

Growing

Where my pond was full of frog spawn it is now full of



tadpoles swimming round showing off their feathery external gills.

Frogs Have Been Busy

My garden pond is looking a bit full in one quarter



Much of the rest of it is overgrown but with plenty of hiding places for the tadpoles when they appear.

Tadpoles by the Hundred

Just sixteen days since I noticed the frog spawn in the garden pond.
Thought I would check to see how it was progressing:



These two short video clips don't show even half of what was there.
If they all mature into frogs I won't be able to move in the garden.

A Nervous Visitor

Penny had been in the garden for a few minutes so I was more than a little surprised to see a Grey Heron had landed near the pond. It was keeping an eye on where she was but Penny couldn't see it as the greenhouse was in the way. She only noticed when it took off:

A First For My Pond

Pottering round the garden I suddenly noticed a pair of Common Darter Dragonflies. I have often seen them singly but this was the first time of seeing a pair together. Had to dash in to grab the Canon as the pocket Nikon would never have focussed on them:



Not only that but the female kept dipping her 'tail' in the water:



Which I assume meant she was depositing eggs:



I was able to grab a few seconds of video before they moved on:



Here's hoping the pond is now a breeding ground for Dragonflies as well as Damselflies. Not forgetting the frogs and newts which also breed there.

Wordless Wednesday - Garden Pond Tadpoles

Friday at the Flicks - Frogs

 


They arrived last weekend, all gone again by Tuesday leaving 14 clumps of spawn.




I'm still trying to make my mind up which bird can be heard near the end.

Eyes a Watching You

Last weekend the frogs arrived in the garden pond.

A Frog He Would A-wooing Go

A frog he would a-wooing go,
Heigh ho! says Rowley,
A frog he would a-wooing go,
Whether his mother would let him or no.
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.

So starts the old nursery rhyme.
It has a rather sad ending but hopefully the local frogs will live to tell the tale:



At least two pair of mating frogs, lots of spawn and a forlorn looking wallflower(*):







That makes at least five lots of frog spawn in my garden pond so far.





It looks like being a bumper year for spawn.



If you don't know, or have forgotten, the nursery rhyme there is a beautifully illustrated old version on the Gutenberg site HERE.  (You may have to dismiss a 'welcome' box and then click on the 'read this book online HTML' choice, unless you want to download a version.)

(*) Wallflower -  a person who stays on the fringes of a dance or party on account of lacking a partner or being shy.

Determination

I was having a close look at the pond to see whether there was any more frog spawn when I heard loud splashing near me. I looked round and there, not much more than a couple of metres away, was a female Blackbird bathing in the pond waterfall:



We looked at each other for a short while and then I slowly took the Nikon out of my shirt pocket, gently pointed it in the general direction of the bird and manage to get a shot.



Most birds would not have come down to the pond with me standing so close but she was determined it was bath time and once I stopped looking at her she carried on bathing.

Around the Garden Pond

A quick look at some of the wildlife in and around my garden pond:

Fly:


Wasp:


Pond Skater:


Not seen so far this year are any water boatmen.

Tadpole:


Pond Snail:


Stretch Spider:


Bathing Birds:

Robin:


Juvenile Goldfinch and Starling:



Miniature bullrush,  First of this year's male Blue-tailed Damselflies
  

I have spotted some newts but so far they have been too shy to photograph.

Friday at the Flicks - Hoverfly - Garden Pond

There has been little opportunity to video anything new this past week so I had a look through some old videos that I haven't used yet.  The first was shot in October 2009 when Hoverflies were showing great interest in the Ivy flowers.



The second is a view of my pond. This was never meant to be a public video. In March last year I got it into my head to attempt to build a 'steady cam' as the commercial ones seem so expensive. The idea is that the camera is mounted under a universal joint which, with counterbalance weights, is supposed to keep the camera view steady as the operator moves. I think I can claim it was partially successful. I tested it out as I walked up and down beside my garden pond.



The idea was to improve the design this past Summer but, as usual, that got buried on the Round Tuit pile.
The pond is just a large rectangular shape and very shallow as it was originally designed for testing radio controlled boats. That didn't last very long and I have been lucky that, with addition of pond plants, it has matured and attracts a variety of wildlife which includes, frogs, newts, damselflies and dragonflies.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Another Little Ice Sculpture

The small ice sculpture on the pond waterfall I filmed a while ago had melted within a couple of days but very recently a new one has taken its place. Even while we have had night temperatures down to -9C and days when it has remained below zero the birds have continued to use the waterfall for drinking and bathing. The whole of the sides of it are covered with ice formed while the birds have been splashing about.



In places some of the nearby plants are covered in a thick layer of ice where they have been splashed. Starlings are the main culprits in the 'splash it all over' scene as they don't mind how cold water is.



Most interesting, to me anyway, has been the formation of another little sculpture, once again hollow where the running water still flows.



Only a bit of video can show the effect:



On a technical note it is amazing how well modern methods can compress a video. The original clips as taken by the Lumix totalled 225MB but using  a format called H264 this was reduced to under 20MB but still gave a good clear result. It certainly saves on upload time.