Once upon a many years ago, a cart track ran from a nearby road and turned at our yard to run down to the local corn mill. The track has long since fallen out of use, but a dip in the track next to the yard has slowly collected water and now contains a large population of frogs. Sadly it’s heavily shaded by sycamore weedstrees that shed their leaves into the pond each autumn. At some point I intend to get rid of the sycamore except where it shades the pond from direct sun and rake a lot of the leaves out to try to keep the water healthier.
A couple of weeks ago whilst chainsawing logs near the pond I stopped to rest and initially thought I heard a distant tractor engine, but eventually realised that what I was hearing was lots of frogs croaking. A quick visit to the pond revealed perhaps around fifty frogs with their heads poking through the surface of the water, croaking away. A couple of days ago I went back to see if they were still there. They weren’t, but this not particularly great image shows what I did find:
I don’t know why it seems to be two different colours. Perhaps two different breeds of frog, or different ages of spawn, or perhaps one isn’t even frogs. Maybe one day I’ll find out. I’ll try to remember to go back regularly to see how they’re getting on.