It’s spring and love is in the air, and if you are lucky, in copious amounts in your pond!
That’s because it’s frog spawn season and the Common Frog (Rana temporaria) are out in force depositing their eggs in every pond or puddle they can find.
Fun Fact 1
A female frog can produce up to 4,000 eggs in a season.
Fun Fact 2
Male frogs have nuptial pads (or as I like to call it, love velcro) on their front feet to grip the female as she lays the eggs so he can fertilise them.
Common frogs like to lay their eggs in sunny temporary shallow bodies of water, where there will be few predators to eat the eggs (looking at you newts) hence their Latin name “temporaria”.
One of the joys of spring is getting out to look for frogspawn in all the puddles the wet winter has provided. You can help frogs this spring by providing some water in your garden or allotment for them to spawn in, as it only takes a little bit!
Frogs are great for the garden. They eat slugs and other pests, no need for nasty slug pellets; just get a frog!
“Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur—this lovely world, these precious days…”
~ E.B. White from Charlotte’s Web
When you go exploring however, please keep dogs on the lead so they don’t jump into the water and plough through it destroying an entire season’s worth of new baby frogs. Amphibians are having enough problems without man’s best friend wading in!
Now get out there and enjoy the love!
Caroline Farrow
Operations Officer and Costons Lane Nature Reserve Project Leader
