Tadpoles

The tadpoles have hatched in my pond. These little ones are sunning themselves in the warm shallows. No, those are not legs or arms sticking out of their sides, but gills. That’s what they breathe with before they metamorphose into air-breathing amphibians.

Strangely, a new dollop of Frogspawn appeared this morning. Someone was a bit late for the main spawning last month, or maybe it’s more than a coincidence that it is a full moon!?

Frogs go croak, croak croak!

I can hear them! The frogs are croaking outside. They are very late this year, it’s been so cold and the pond has been iced up a lot, but I reckon there may be frogspawn by the morning.

Twitterpating

No, nothing to do with Twitter – I can feel a change in the air. Spring can’t be that far away and my pond was not looking too inviting for the frogs, so I got out in the breeze this afternoon and cleared out the gunk and detritis.. Mmm – lovely.

I have a feeling the frogs are getting twitterpated themselves and will be along quite soon to lay the frogspawn. It makes me feel quite chirpy!

Bling My Coach

Please vote for the Pink Car Rally coach to win the bling my coach competition by voting for them here
The Pink Car Rally is in aid of a fledgling children’s charity, called the Little Princess Trust, which provides children who have lost their hair (primarily through cancer treatments) with ‘real hair’ wigs. If we win this competition, we can take 49 pink passengers on the coach and if each one raised an average of £50 Sponsorship, we could raise in the region of £2500 for the charity!! How fantastic would that be? It means that the charity could provide wigs for 8 more children!! We NEED to win!! Please help us…..

Please look at the short film, which is introduced by Gail Porter, on the Little Princess Trust’s website (www.littleprincesses.org.uk) It tells the story of how the charity helped Melissa….

Versatile Squirrel

How does he do that?

I’ve always wondered how puffins sort the fish they catch so that they stick out of the sides of their beaks in that nice, orderly way.

I just heard a bit of kerfuffling on the roof of my studio. This is usually either cats, squirrels or blackbirds looking for grubs in the leaf litter. A minute later I was distracted by a movement outside my window. A squirrel clung to the trunk of the willow tree, that is about twenty five feet away. It was flicking it’s tail as if to get my attention. Then I saw it was carrying two apples in its mouth, arranged beautifully, like a puffin arranges its fish.

I scrabbled around, looking for my camera, telling it to stay still for just one more moment. The camera does not zoom that far, but by cropping and enlarging in photoshop, you can see what he was up to. Once I’d got the shot, he shook his tail and disappeared.

The birds have been acting strangely this morning too. Flitting around the pond in an agitated state – mostly tits and dunnocks that have been invisible all summer. It must be the equinox – a message has been triggered in their brains. “Get ready for winter!”

Flatworms in the Pond

intel play

At last I’ve got software to make my old intel play microscope work. I don’t know what took me so long to look for it and down load it. Of course now that it works, the quality is a little sad, but then it is quite old and we’ve come to expect so much of digital imaging in the meantime. Maybe I should put down a new microscope on my Christmas present list.

Either way, it’s much more fun than squinting down an optical microscope.

I’ve noticed a bit of an invasion of flatworms in the pond this summer. I love the way they glide through the water, just under the surface, using the surface tension to hold them up. The Flatworms, or Planaria, are about 12 to 15 mm long. They are related to tapeworms and liver flukes. They are carnivorous. As they have no blod, if you split them in two, two new flatworms will grow.

The microscope doesn’t do that well with bigger things like this, but I did make a little movie of it gliding around a blob of water that shows you how graceful they are. They move by using hair like cillia as little rowing oars. I should try to get closer in and show that movement. Flatworms are not to be confused with leeches – I’ve got them in the pond too!

Summer Pond

I’ve been so enjoying my pond this summer. There are masses of tadpoles. As I look out of my studio window, the surface shimmers as the pop to the surface for a mouthful of air. I got a picture of one breathing, below.

I love the way they turn belly up to breathe. Also on this picture is something new and unidentified. If I get to close is spirals down to the bottom of the pond at great speed – it then floats back up to the surface just a s fast. It’s hard to see by eye, but from the blown-up picture it looks like it has a springy tail.

This lot look happy enough. There are shrimps or lice (not sure which) and a snail or two.

The pond attracts other wildlife, some of which like to see what I’m up to. This large red Damsel Fly came into the studio yesterday to have a look around.Â

Frogs In the House

I got myself a new video camera yesterday. It is smaller and lighter than a mobile phone, yet it takes incredible HD movies. Here is a quick test fil to see how it looks on Youtube. My Cats have started to bring frogs into the house to play with. They don’t seem to damage them. They just want a bit of fun. This means I’m the one that has to rescue them from behind the sofa!

Where Did All My Frog Spawn Go – Year2

I had a sneeky feeling last year that something ate my frog spawn. I also had a paranoid thought that someone may have come and stolen it for a joke! Anyway, last year all my frog spawn disappeared overnight. The only possible clue was a disturbance of the gravel on “the beach”.

I wondered if it could be a fox. I guess a load of frog spawn may look like caviar to other creatures.

The best explantion I could find was Newts, that apparently eat spawn and tadpoles as if they are going out of fashion.

This year I decided not to advertise the laying of the spawn on my site in case a trickster was involved. each morning I made sure that new batches of spawn were protected by chicken wire. I soon found one possible culprit. My dear cat, Darcey. He was desperate to get at the spawn. He prodded and poked between the chicken wire and licked his paws a lot. Frog spawn must be tasty to cats.

Here is the evidence – naughty cat!

I think he could have been responsible for some of last year’s loss, but not all. Last year one ball of spawn was laid a good 80 centimetres from the shore and about 30 centimetres deep. That disappeared the same night as all the rest.

I can’t see a cat going that deep or that wet to get at frog spawn. I can believe that a fox might though.

One side effect of all this protection was that the water turned a thick pea green colour as the tadpoles began to emerge.. I was worried it might affect them. I removed the chicken wire and now, two weeks later, I can report that the water has has become crystal clear again and the tadpoles seem to be doing fine.

It’s quite hard to take photos of them. I think I probably need a polarising filter.

This year there are pond skaters skipping about the surface of the water. A new species for this year.

I visited Stourhead Gardens last Sunday and spotted water boatmen in their lake. I always enjoyed watching water boatmen as a child. I d be very happy if they somehow found their way into my pond. I suppose I could introduce them, but that seems a bit unfair. one of the things i like about my pond is watching to see how the wildlife discovers it is there. Mind you, I suppose protecting the frog spawn is an unnatural thing to do.

Ice

I thought I saw something odd in the pond a couple of days agao. Something was lurking at the bottom – it was ice. But surely Ice floats! It’s been so cold, the whole pond has frozen solid and is melting from the top down so, as I hope you can see from the picture, there is just a shallow covering of water over a huge block of ice. I do wonder how the pond cratures have coped with it. Just before Christmas, there was a lot of Daphnia about. I’ll have to see when it has warmed up again.