First frogspawn

[Primrose]

Yippee! Spring has truly come to our garden. The first batch of frogspawn appeared in my mini pond today. Last year it arrived on March 11th. But I noticed that many of the little back specks in the spawn were half white and I've noticed this in previous years too. Does this mean that these eggs are infertile?

I also always end up with far too much spawn for my pond. How do other people solve this problem?

[alan refail]

Hi Primrose

I'm afraid the white ones are infertile/dead. But you are concerned about what to do with the spare, so hope you have some left for yourself. If you have too much there are two answers: give it to other people who have frogless ponds, or put it in a natural pond (it's not like releasing baby alligators into the wild )

Here are some great photos I found:

http://www.erodent.co.uk/GardenPond/March2004.htm

Alan

[Primrose]

Alan - I really enjoyed reading your link and seeing the photos. No doubt I shall soon be approaching all my fellow pond owning neighbourhs who will cross over the road when they see me thinking "Oh no, it's that woman again trying to get rid of frogspawn". One year we did creep down to our local stream at daybreak with a couple of buckets full of the stuff. But I'd rather do this than have too many of them in the pond starving to death. However, I do supplement the natural algae with boiled lettuce (they seem to like the old-fashioned fleshy butterhead varieties best) and once they realise it's edible, hundreds of them swarm like sharks onto the cooked leaves. Within 30 minutes there's nothing but the fleshy rib left, so I guess that means they were pretty hungry.

[alan refail]

Primrose

Thanks for your thanks

I wish we still had a pond full of spawn. unfortunately we now have a fast flowing river

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/341033

no pond and no frogs. Just a few wandering toads.

Alan

[Primrose]

Gosh, what happened? Have you moved house since those earlier photos were taken?

Our last house backed onto a river. We never found a single frog in our back garden all that time. Don't think they like fast flowing currents.

[alan refail]

No, this is where we are now - the photos were not mine.

Alan

[Monika]

That's great, Primrose, the first frogspawn! We have about 20 frogs cavorting in our garden pond (very noisy at night!), but no spawn yet. The funny thing is, that every year the very much larger and deeper pond on our local Nature Reserve (where I am the warden) gets the frogs and spawn about a fortnight later than in the garden, although they are only about 400 feet apart, though the garden is more sheltered and sunnier, so I suppose the water warms up earlier. We also have a sort of spawn exchange in the village: those who have too much bring it to the Nature Rserve pond and those who want to establish a new pond are allowed to take some from the Nature Reserve. So we all gain. And, by the way, you are never likely to get "too many" frogs. Nature evens it out, some spawn will not hatch, many tadpoles will be eaten by newts (which you are likely to have in the pond, too) and even when the baby frogs leave the pond, they will be eaten by many other creatures, including blackbirds!

[Primrose]

Mokina - you're so right about the baby frogets being eaten by blackbirds. When they start migrating from the pond I see the magpies hovering in the trees nearby waiting to come down for a tasty snack. The first year it happened I didn't realise what was happening and it was only when I started to mow the lawn and found to my horror that all these little babies were frantically trying to leap one step ahead of the motor mower that I realised how tenuous their grip on life was. Now I sweep the lawn before I mow at migrating time and rescue as many as I can and try to scare the birds off too, but truly, life is really hazardous as a baby frog. I gather as many as I can up and put them under the shelter of the big courgette leaves in the nearby veggie patch but if only I could tell them to "stay put" until I've finished mowing !!

[jane E]

Be wary of moving spawn/tadpoles about. It's easy to spread diseases such as red leg to ponds that haven't got it.

[Geoff]

I thought I would be well behind these postings but opened the back door this morning and was greeted by the noise of the annual orgy in the pond and went and found the first spawn. I had checked during the week and there wasn't a single frog. How do they all manage to appear at once, is there a frog internet or mobile phone system to notify them of raves? It also seems strange how little North / South difference there is.

[Monika]

Thanks, Jane, for the mention of "red legs", but as far as I know it is still refined to more southerly counties because it needs lengthy spells of warm weather in spring to survive.

I think, Geoff, that the frogs act more on day length than air temperature when they return to the ponds to spawn though they won't actually spawn until the water temperature is right. At the moor edge here where there are lots of small shallow "pondlets", the frogspawn apears very early because they are completely open to the sun all day and warm up very quickly. On the other hand, they also freeze up at the slightest frost or, when there are a few rainless days, even dry up. And all the spawn is wasted! But a few frogs must survive because they return year after year.

[Alison]

Frog croakings got our attention today, and I have never ever seen so many frogs before in our two 60ft ponds. The water is alive with the sound of frogs (!) and heaving and rippling. In three places, there was a mountain of frogs, all on top of each other, in the middle of the pond, with about ten frogs actually right out of the water, resting on all the others underneath. We have one large mass of spawn, about 2-3ft across in the middle of the pond.
There was also a couple of long ropes of toad spawn on the bank, rather dried out and looking like shiny sticky licorice, so I bunged them in the pond, hoping they might revive.
I do hope it is not too early for them. Their local predator here is the heron, who is now here most mornings. I assume they eat tadpoles and frogs?
Many thanks for the lovely photos-link, Alan. That is just what our ponds look like!
Alison.

[Jea]

We also had loads of frog spawn laid overnight 23/24 Feb. I've been keeping records of frog spawn over about 20 years and this is the earliest its been. Previous earliest was in 1998 (also a warm Feb) when it appeared 28 Feb. Usual time for frog spawn here (Suffolk) is between 7-12 March.

[madasafish]

Too early here. second week March is most likely.

[madasafish]

My previous post was too optimistic.
We had our first pile of frogspawn Sunday night - 18th March.

It snowed - right on cue - the next day:-)