Growing

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



tadpoles swimming round showing off their feathery external gills.

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.

Growing

There are quite a few large frog tadpoles swimming round the garden pond:



My one and only large strawberry plant grown from seed continues to develop:



Early strawberry plants (Vibrant), bought bare root and listed as fruiting next year, are producing flowers for this year:



A couple of Outdoor Girl tomato plants in an automatic watering system are now showing their first flower buds:

What a Lot I've Got

Once I had finished trimming the lawn yesterday I had a quick look to see how the frog spawn in the garden pond was progressing. No frog spawn, now hundreds of tadpoles:







If they all grow up I will have to get a bigger pond, or bigger garden!

Wordless Wednesday - Garden Pond Tadpoles

Tadpoles by the Score

The great majority of the frog spawn in the garden pond has now disappeared and in its place are scores of tiny tadpoles:





I wonder just how many of these will grow and mature to join the other frogs in the garden.

Friday at the Flicks - Tadpole Gills + Hedgehog

At the time of making this video it had been 16 days since the frogs spawned. Many of the tadpoles were at the wriggly stage. They were free of the spawn but not yet swimming.

 

I collected a few in a dish to have a closer look under the microscope. I hadn't expected to actually see through the gills and watch them working, circulating the blood with each heart beat to extract oxygen from the water.  I am still amazed how well the video camera is working on the microscope:





Once filmed the tadpoles were returned to the pond.

A last minute video clip from last night. Just as I was about to turn everything off I spotted a Hedgehog helping itself to the crushed, unsalted peanuts in the Hedgehog House:



Obviously it wasn't the least bit bothered by the six white LEDs as it had a good close sniff at the camera.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Newly Hatched Tadpoles

The first full post completed on the laptop. How nice to be able to compute and take in some fresh air at the same time. Lovely to sit here and listen to all the bird song.

Things keep catching me by surprise this Spring so I shouldn't have been surprised to see tadpoles swimming around this morning. These are from a batch of frog spawn I transferred from the pond to the 'nursery pool' a few days ago.:


Tadpoles 1 from Midmarsh on Vimeo.


The video was taken with an endoscope camera hand held just above the water surface. Low quality as it only has 300K pixels but it is small, waterproof, has 4 LED lights built in, focuses from 6cm to infinity, plugs in a USB port and has a 7m cable. Another reason I wanted a laptop - hopefully to be able to get some underwater video in the pond.

Friday at the Flicks - Nest Building, Robin, Tadpoles

Nest building in the camera nest box came to a halt for the best part of two days as heavy rain moved south over the country. We had one inch (about 24mm) in less than 24hrs - a lot for this part of the country. It won't go far towards alleviating the drought conditions though it did top up my pond.. At one stage the female Great Tit settled down in there, tucked her head under a wing and had a well deserved rest. This morning activity has started again and the nest is progressing slowly. This is a capture from this mornings activity. A lot of effort goes in to trying to tame the unruly bits of moss she brings.



One of the regulars at the bird table is a Robin Redbreast. Normally it nips in, grabs a bite to eat and rushes off again but this morning it stayed long enough to get some video.




The little bits of chocolate looking embryos are now recognisable tadpoles able to swim around the nursery pool looking for food.



 Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you wherever you are.

Friday at the Flicks - Tadpoles, Wood Pigeon, Wren

Not the best of days today. Spent ages trying to beat a WiFi PCI card into submission, waited in for three days now for a delivery which seems to have gone AWOL and watched paint dry while the video clips uploaded to YouTube. Anyway, got there in the end though it took a while for my remaining grey cell to work out what YouTube had done with the 'embed' facility. Now I have to click on the 'share' button which then reveals the 'embed' button. Why do the encoders at these places have to keep messing about and making it more difficult to use?

The last time I filmed the tadpoles in the nursery pond was on the 2nd of this month when they were skinny little things with large external gills. This morning I filmed them again. They have matured well in the past two weeks and are now large enough to enjoy eating floating Koi sticks as well as all the algae they are scraping off everything in the nursery pond.



 This morning I saw a Wood Pigeon sat on the ivy growing the other side of my fence and having a grand tuck in to the ripe berries.



Finally, also seen this morning,  a Wren sat on top of my artificial wagon wheel having a very energetic preening session. It may appear to be speeded up but it is actually filmed at normal speed. To give an idea of the size of a Wren to those who are not familiar with them - the wood of the wheel is about 2 inches (50mm) wide.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Tadpoles Galore

It was only 22nd March when I photographed the newly laid frog spawn. All told 6 lots were laid and, as last year, I moved 4 of the lots to the 'nursery' pond so any hatching tadpoles wouldn't get eaten by the fish in the main pond.  Today when I first looked at the spawn I thought it had failed as it was just a flat mass of jelly but on closer observation there they were - scores of tiny tadpoles.



I hope they thrive as well as last year's batch did when I was able to return scores of them back in the main pond when their back legs were beginning to appear and they seemed big and strong enough to survive in there.

A short piece of video taken today. The tadpoles are about 11mm long:



Still and video taken with the Panasonic Lumix TZ7

Tadpoles

It is two months since the last of the frog spawn was transferred to the nursery pond to keep any emerging tadpoles safe from the fish in the main pond. They are continuing to grow and now show well developed back legs.



Even in the small pond they are now difficult to catch as they are more aware and observant, diving down at the slightest sign of movement.

White Bluebells

There are a few large clumps of cultivated bluebells in my back garden which have been flowering for over thirty years. Noticeable amongst all the blue are two stems of pure white flowers. They are possibly a hybrid: Hyacinthoides x massartiana



A short while ago I labelled this photo as horse chestnut, but I think it should have been labelled as Sycamore:



For one thing the Horse Chestnut flower spike grows upwards as can be seen here:



Many of the scores of frog tadpoles in the nursery pond are developing their back legs. There are so many that I have started transferring some to the main pond. There they will have more natural food, less chance of using up the oxygen in the water and they should now be large enough to be safe from the fish.



The legs can just be made out along side the tail of this tadpole which is one of about fifty I moved yesterday. As their skin is delicate I scooped them in small batches into a plant pot saucer with the water rather than using a net.

While I was moving the tadpoles I noticed that one small ant had managed to get in the nursery pond and was walking about on the weed trying to find a way out.

Friday at the Flicks (Bread, Blackbird, Tadpoles) + some batty sounds

A few days ago I put out a small piece of bread to see which bird would be the first to notice it.



I make no apologies for yet another video of a Blackbird singing. This time I managed to get a clear view of a local singing in broad daylight. Usually they are camera shy.



Last weekend I managed to get to an aquatic centre and pick up a new tub of Koi floating sticks for the tadpoles. During the cold weather I thought that only a few of them had survived but as soon as the Sun comes out dozens of them can been seen in the nursery pond.




At dusk yesterday I noticed a bat or two flitting round the Leylandii next door so I dug out the bat detector to see if I could pick up any of their echo location sounds. Not a brilliant recording as it took a while for me to tune in to them and then they moved on. Also I had it too loud and the recording was very hissy so I spent a while with GoldWave processing the file. At the same time I was able to cut out the long sections where no bat was within range.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you. I must spend some time catching up on other blogs. I am well behind as this seems to have been a busy week.

Feeding Tadpoles - Resident Hedgehog

If your tadpoles are in a pond with plenty of algae then they will have lots to eat while they are in their vegetarian stage. Mine are in a small nursery pond as the main pond has fish which would probably eat them while they are small. My little pond has plenty of oxygenating plants and a certain amount of blanket weed which is giving a good base for algae to grow.

As there are a lot of tadpoles in there I had a look round to see what extra might be added to their diet. Suggestions I have seen have ranged from bits of marmite sandwich to lettuce leaves. The leaves need softening which can be done by boiling or freezing them. Another suggestion I have seen is to use flaked fish food or floating pond sticks as long as small amounts are used as any which are uneaten can cause the water to become foul.

I had a look round and found I had a small amount of flakes and sticks left over from previous years so decided to see whether the tadpoles would like them. Just a tiny amount was scattered on the water. When I went back a couple of hours later there was a frenzy of activity especially round the floating sticks which had softened nicely.





It wasn't just the tadpoles which were grateful for a little extra food.



It hadn't taken the pond snails long to find it so the tadpoles were getting some strong competition.

Stop Press - Resident Hedgehog

Something made me check the view from the old black and white camera inside the Hedgehog house I installed last Autumn. To date I had been a little disappointed to see that the bedding material had remained in exactly the same position all that time. This morning was different. I could see the hay and dried leaves had moved. On close examination it was possible to see the spiny back of a Hedgehog moving as it breathed.



Not a brilliant video clip from the old board camera but it is possible to see the movement left of centre. Now I will have to be patient to find out if it is a one off event or whether the Hedgehog makes this its permanent nesting area.

Of Tadpoles and Tad Polls

Just a couple of tadpole photos today. They are doing a great job of scraping the algae from the sides of the nursery pond.



What took me by surprise was the almost see through nature of much of the tail when seen side on.

 

Just recently I have discovered The Garden Pond Blog and found the only bit of light relief I have seen during this prolonged and dreary election of ours. It would appear that it is not only the national newspapers which have opinion polls. For something completely different have a look at The Tad Poll.

Friday at the Flicks (Tadpoles, Lambs, Mistle Thrush)

What a difference ten days makes. The tadpoles are growing well with plenty of algae to feed on. I wonder when the back legs will start appearing. (Taken with the Lumix)



Yesterday we took a different route behind the cricket field to get nearer the lambs. That meant crossing one style which Bobby, after a bit of trembling and sizing up, managed to leap. On the way back though he scrambled over it rather than jumping. (Taken with the Lumix, hand held)



Finally the nearest I've got to identifying the bird whose song has been echoing over the village nearly every morning for a month or more. It was a long way away on a high roof top, recorded about 7 in the morning and needed every bit of the 70x zoom on the Panasonic camcorder. I am pretty sure this is a Mistle Thrush.



Here's hoping for a sunny warm weekend so we can all enjoy the sights and sounds of the wildlife around us.

Tadpoles in the Nursery Pond

I had been a bit worried when the first clump of frog spawn in the nursery pond began to turn white as this usually means it wasn't fertilised. I need not have worried however as quite a few tadpoles have emerged from that batch and dozens from the second batch.



At least they are safe from the fish in the main pond so they should have a good chance of growing to a size where it will be safe to return them..