Frogs leave me jumping for joy
I HAD a most otherworldly experience this week when I was filming in a pond – I was mobbed by tadpoles.
To be honest it wasn’t me, it was my GoPro camera, but watching the film back is pretty surreal.
I saw some movement in the water, and lowered the camera in.
I was in the middle of a swarm, a flock or a shoal of tadpoles?
Actually the collective noun is a cloud. It was mesmerising – the little beggars were swirling around the camera and chasing it when I was moving it.
How absolutely amazing to land slap bang in the middle of one of Nature’s magic moments.
It was like jumping into a cold lake, initially it took my breath away and then I was floating, spellbound by the whole experience.
Colleagues have asked me to put the footage on a big screen in the office, but no one would get any work done.
It has been a few months of froggy experiences, to be honest.
My mum has a resident frog in her tiny, one-year-old pond.
I stress the ‘one-year-old’ as I said ‘two years’ on Radio Manchester last week and Elsie told me off.
Again I was filming, the frog was sunbathing on the bottom of the pond in bright sunshine.
I couldn’t really see the screen, but when I played it back a newt had joined it.
This is a microcosm of the ponds across the North West and our team of John Lamb and Pam Derbyshire have created more than 50 in the last few months.
Many more will be dug in this 25-year project.
It’s all very technological, but they are taking DNA samples in the water and the vast majority are showing signs of rare great crested newts. It is amazing that these new ponds and my mum’s year-old pond are already providing homes for lots of species.
Another frog encounter happened in my own back garden.
We generally have a frog or a toad living there, even though it is only a small space with no pond.
It’s great when a frog or a toad makes a home in your garden because they feed on pests, like slugs.
Just a warning – please ensure, you check long grass before cutting your lawn, because these amazing amphibians might just be resting in there.
Frogs tend to be around 10cm long and can live up to 10 years.
They breed in ponds and the eggs or frog spawn will be tadpoles now, probably with tiny legs.
After a couple of months these froglets will make their way out of the water and feed in woodland, gardens, hedgerows and tussocky grassland for the rest of the year.
The common frog varies in colour, from green to brown and even red or yellow.
It has smooth skin, a dark mask behind the eye and long back legs, covered in dark bands. It hops and jumps rather than walks like the toad, which is thicker set.
We are so lucky to be able to watch as frogs go from spawn, to froglets to fully grown adults. This is Nature at its most raw and beautiful.
I will be making sure I have many more frog encounters this summer, before they hop it and hibernate in autumn.