Froggy Bottoms

This afternoon there were five of us new froglets just sitting on the rocks at the edge of the Trug Pond watching the world go by. The last three months have been a whirl of activity in the never-ending hunt for food. But today, with the sun shining and our appetites gone, we just sat back, half in, half out of the water and took a leisurely look at the garden around us.



The Trug Pond is surrounded by dense undergrowth - an ivy, lavender, poppies, a couple of campanulas, a veronica and various ice plants. The ivy is a particularly good place to find insects; as I write I can see a couple of froglet bottoms sticking out between the ivy leaves some 20cm up from the ground. It's a great place to climb through looking for small insects.

If you sat with us on the rocks for just 15 minutes watching the periphery of the pond you would be amazed by the amount and variety of activity going on. Iridescent beetles busily scouting around, hover flies busy around the flowers, a slim elegant white slug examining a fallen leaf. We've seen tiny spiders and millipedes, and of course we are visited by the odd snail. There are plenty of ants and small flies too - they look interesting...

But there are some pretty scary spiders out there, some bigger than we are and a real danger to us at the moment. I'm looking forward to when I'll be a real danger to them!

Cuthbert returns for a Visit

We had an unexpected visitor to the trug pond today - Cuthbert, one of our earliest graduates, came back to visit. As you can see, he is now about 1.5 cm long and a fine figure of a frog. We first saw him jumping across the rockery towards the pond and was stunned by the way he dwarfed the newer froglets, many not even half his size.



Cuthbert stayed for an hour or so and regaled the youngsters with exciting stories from the undergrowth around the trug pond - of fighting vicious slugs, ambushing spiders and nearly being stepped on while crossing the lawn. It certainly sounds jolly thrilling out there. Before going Cuthbert gave a death-defying demonstration of how to climb the ivy in the pursuit of food.

Not all water is the same...

One of the problems living in a pond as small as ours is maintaining the water quality. We only have 27 litres of water and because it is a new pond there is little in the way of bacteria in the silt at the bottom to process our waste. You see there is a lot of us growing fast and as a result we produce a lot of ammonia and other waste which is very poisonous. In a normal pond bacteria in the mud and on plant surfaces convert the ammonia we produce into nitrites and then nitrates which are a lot safer. (Though even they will become poisonous if they become too concentrated). This is know as the Nitrogen Cycle.

In our new pond the bacteria haven't had a chance to build up yet, but luckily 20% of the water gets replaced with fresh pond water each day and that has stopped the ammonia causing us problems - until this weekend.

For some reason our regular water change stopped for a few days and the ammonia started to build up. Without enough friendly bacteria to clean the water the future looked bleak and indeed a couple of froglets died on the third day. Such was the rapidity of the change in water quality.

We were still reeling from the loss of our friends when we discovered that Archie, a young froglet who still had a long tail, had set out on a rather over enthusiastic expedition from the pond and not made it back.

On Monday we were saved by a massive water change, all the water in the trug being replaced with water from a nearby pond. This was lovely stuff, not a hint of chlorine (which is fatal to us), no measurable ammonia, or nitrites and 10 mg/l of nitrates which our more scientifically literate tadpoles say is just fine. It certainly feels a lot better!

Family Reunited

The last few days have seen big changes in this pond of ours. More plants have appeared giving better cover and there are some interesting new piles of stones, ideal for hiding between while waiting for prey. The grill over the water surface helps protect us from becoming prey ourselves, but some enterprising froglets have found it makes a great climbing frame too.



The plant pots on the left and right sit on slate and brick frog houses, apparently provided by a friendly deity to give interesting places to hide. But everyone who have explored the area say that there are some great places to hide in the plants.

But the biggest news has been the arrival of the rest of the family. In total another 258 tadpoles have joined us from the old box where we first hatched, making nearly four hundred of us in all. Even better, twenty five new froglets turned up, to join the thirteen still building up the courage to leave the trug. I was amazed just how small some of them were. The biggest trug froglets have bodies over a centimetre long; these newcomers seemed tiny in comparison. Still, it was great to see our old friends again.



The other really great news is that I gained front legs overnight. My sides had been itching for days and recently I found that my back legs were becoming pretty useful for struggling onto the edge of the lily leaf floating in the trug. They are getting noticeably stronger as I use them more. But now I have front legs too, and its true - your appetite really does disappear once your legs appear! I've spent much of today just sitting on a stone at the surface, building up the courage to start exploring further afield.

Exploration...

It has been glorious weather for froglets today. Although dry overnight, a friendly deity hosed the garden down early in the morning making perfect conditions for hunting ants amongst the vegetation.

Most of the day there were between five and seven froglets either on the edge of the pond or in the rocks around it. They made short forays into the plants, hungry after a few days of fasting while their lungs developed.



Unfortunately all this excitement and talk about exploring the garden was all a bit much for Boris, who in a fit of enthusiasm managed to throw himself over the pond edge and into the rockery. Unfortunately Boris, though a sizeable chap, is still a tadpole and doesn't have any legs yet. It could have been disastrous for Boris, but luckily a local deity was on hand to scoop him up, with a tea spoon of all things, and return him to the trug.

Froglet, froglets everywhere...

The three hours of thunderstorms last night left the garden nice and damp for exploring this morning. Anyone sitting quietly and watching the trug pond would have seen froglets climbing out and heading in all directions. A handful of our number have lost their tails altogether now and can hop really well. They tend to climb on to the rock platform and jump into the nearby plants, where they can hunt ants.



A few froglets, still with short tails, climbed out under the protective plastic grill that protects the pond from birds and larger aquatic inhabitants. This allowed them to clamber over the edge of the trug and into the rocks and ice plants that lead down to the larger of the two nearby frog houses.

The protective grill touches the water surface in the centre of the pond and Cuthbert managed to balance precariously on the grill until a human loomed into view and he dived for cover.

Meanwhile our older family members in the large pond took the opportunity to have a sun bathe with their friends.



It is quite common to see four or five fish and a couple of frogs all sun bathing together in the warmest part of the pond. Hopefully I'll be big enough to join them next year.

Meet the Family

Now we have settled into the new trug pond things have been quite relaxing for the last couple of days. Rupert went off exploring yesterday and hasn't been seen since. He said he was going to investigate the ivy that cover the ground to the south of the pond. I hope he is OK.

Meanwhile two or three of our more advanced froglets have taken over Rupert's post on the rock by the edge of the pond. Their view of the world has been short lived at times, as Gertrude, who has a fine set of back legs, but no front legs yet, repeatedly launches herself onto the rock sending the froglets flying. She just can't wait to get those front legs and sit proudly half in, half out of the water.

I realise that I haven't got around to telling you who we are. We are European Common Frogs (Rana temporaria) though unfortunately the loss of many of the UK's farm ponds means that we are not so common these days. Here's some pictures of our parents in the big pond to give an idea of what we will grow up to be like in three or four years.



Our parents came from a neighbour's pond, where our family have been living for may years. But this spring it got just too crowded - at one point there were eleven adults singing around the pond. So our parents decided to move. They had investigated the main pond in this garden some years before, but its high walls and limited vegetation made it tricky to get back out of.

This year things had improved. There are still some pretty big fish to contend with, but half the surface is now covered with lily pads that make it easy to jump out of the pond, and give great shade to doze under.



Our parents have been joined by two juveniles and they say that this garden is a pretty good place to stay. Apart from the pond there is a small bog garden and a varied range of ground hugging plants to hide under. Many gardens around here are lifeless expanses of concrete or tiles. Here the small lawn and flower beds give a good supply of insects and scrumptious snails. With high fences that keep out the cats and foxes I'm beginning to really look forward to exploring the outside world.

Rupert makes it to dry land

Rupert was one of the first to get his front legs and easily the most excited about the platform that breaks the surface in our new home. I can't see what the attraction is, but he has spent all today just sitting out in the air watching the world go by. He hasn't been the same since he got that extra pair of legs.



He just sits there, not even budging at meal times. Meanwhile his once glorious tail, which he was once so proud of, is a mere shadow of its former self. I ask you, he can't even swim with it anymore! What is the point of that?

Another thirty of our friends from the old home came pouring out of the sky to join us today. Life is good, or it would be if I didn't have this dreadful itching down both sides of my body.

Thanks to Rachey Von Grimm for the macro-photography.

A Trug is Dug

With our four-legged brothers wishing to leave home we suddenly realised that we have no way of getting out of this box. This led to one or two of the froglets getting panicky - they said they were finding it hard to breathe underwater and needed air... But we needn't have worried, The Great Fat Frog was already building us a new home.



For the princely sum of £40 he had bought a garden trug, some plants, a few bricks and a big bag of shiny stones. His great plan was to sink the trug into the garden as a second pond, arranged so that we can easily climb in and out, while giving us lots of exciting places to hide near the water.



After a certain amount of taking another deity's name in vain, the top was cut from the trug and it was sunk into the ground and leveled so that the water surface would match the level of the ground. We looked on in apprehension; it did not look very welcoming to us. And would we still get free daphnia?

Meanwhile one of The Great Fat Frog's underlings, a little angel apparently, was working hard to clean the stones, and get his socks as wet as possible.



Two hours after the great work had been started it was ready for the chosen ones. The trug was filled with pond water and a pile of bricks supported a platform giving easy access to the water's edge. Shady plants surrounded the water and smooth stones ensured easy access to the perimeter of the pond.



We, the vanguard of the six four-legged ones and sixty-eight followers, were magically transported to our new home and have been exploring ever since. We can bask, just under the surface, on the platform, play in the caves underneath and investigate the interesting new plants.

A promised land indeed. But the six chosen ones still say they want to leave.

Let us introduce ourselves...

Let us introduce ourselves, we are about 200 common frog tadpoles that were saved from ravenous ramhorn snails by our blessed deity who we call "The Great Fat Frog" (blessed be his name). You see our parents, in their wisdom, laid us in an ornamental pond, with high side walls and a surplus of murderous snails and giant shubunkins.

When we hatched we found ourselves in a plastic box that gave us panoramic views of the pond in which we had been laid. As well as our parents, we regularly see two or three other frogs hiding under the lily pads in the Hallowed Pond. We'd love to live with them, but The Great Fat Frog has told us we must stay in this special refuge he has created for us.



For the last couple of months we have led a carefree life, feasting on regular supplies of algae, daphnia and Tetramin (which we love). But of late it was getting a bit crowded and so we recently moved to a garden trug which gave us a lot more room to charge around. Quite a lot of us have grown back legs but yesterday six of our number found they had grown front legs over night! These are great! They can hang onto floating weed really well and two have even tried making little jumps. Funnily enough the six seem to have lost their appetites and their tails are shrinking. It's all a bit mysterious and not a little frightening - especially as they have suddenly started going on about wanting to leave home and explore the big wide world...