Good Egg
I won't be taking my mother the Easter eggs she requested today - on the advice of the charity Froglife! It's frogspawn she's after, and I found some this morning. Lovely gelatinous, weighty stuff. I transferred it from floodwater to a spring-fed pond a few metres away in the hope of a better survival rate. But my mother's pond which used to be teeming with frogs and toads may remain barren again. The amphibian and reptile charity Froglife say that introducing spawn to other sites is likely to spread the catastrophic diseases that have affected our hopping population.
On a lighter note, here's a link to an animation made by my sister: The Cycle Of Life.
I have never forgotten the first time I set eyes on spawning frogs and toads when I was a small child. In a ditch joining the River Cam I was transfixed by an orgy of amphibians knotted together and bobbing about in a grim fight for fertility. Mounds of jelly in the cold water protruded slightly at the surface. This was frogspawn, clumping together and multiplying rapidly as more of the males managed to get a grip. I also saw ribbons of eggs among the pond plants, which came from toads. Another year I found a bloody massacre had occurred at a pond near my home. Hundreds of toads had been dismembered. This gory but fascinating scene remains a mystery to this day, but I guessed there had been some kind of feeding frenzy by opportunistic predators. The population survived; I found a 'plague' of toadlets making their mass migration as soon as they metamorphosed from the tadpole stage. The ground beneath my feet was crawling with the dark, copper-eyed creatures the size of a child's little fingernail.
Educating and inspiring a new generation about enthralling events like these will be possible to thanks to £470,000 Heritage Lottery funding won by Froglife this week for its Dragon Finder project.
On a lighter note, here's a link to an animation made by my sister: The Cycle Of Life.
I have never forgotten the first time I set eyes on spawning frogs and toads when I was a small child. In a ditch joining the River Cam I was transfixed by an orgy of amphibians knotted together and bobbing about in a grim fight for fertility. Mounds of jelly in the cold water protruded slightly at the surface. This was frogspawn, clumping together and multiplying rapidly as more of the males managed to get a grip. I also saw ribbons of eggs among the pond plants, which came from toads. Another year I found a bloody massacre had occurred at a pond near my home. Hundreds of toads had been dismembered. This gory but fascinating scene remains a mystery to this day, but I guessed there had been some kind of feeding frenzy by opportunistic predators. The population survived; I found a 'plague' of toadlets making their mass migration as soon as they metamorphosed from the tadpole stage. The ground beneath my feet was crawling with the dark, copper-eyed creatures the size of a child's little fingernail.
Educating and inspiring a new generation about enthralling events like these will be possible to thanks to £470,000 Heritage Lottery funding won by Froglife this week for its Dragon Finder project.
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