Where Have All the Tadpoles Gone??

[Trillipse]

where are they, when do they appear, how come i never see them any more? is it because i am no longer at school. after reading some of Peter Cook's EL Wisty stuff, i got a sudden urge to mess about with the little blighters. i know of a nearby pond... what time do they come to be brought about? Anyone else yearn for such childlike icky pleasures?

[burnhal]

I made a pond in my garden some 6 years ago- only a small one- and left it to nature to colonise. I get thirty to forty frogs in there in early spring thrashing the water to a frenzy as they try to mate. Frogspawn can appear from January through to March depending on location and temperature and tadpoles will appear a week or two after that. If you live in an area with Marsh frogs rather than common frogs the breeding season is later- May/June but most of us have common frogs. Most of the tadpoles have now grown legs and lost their tails and are happily hopping around in the grass- miniature frogs just over a centimetre long.

This year was not the best one- a mild spell in January started off the breeding then the very cold spell in Feb killed off a lot of the spawn.

[cat woman]

They are not tadpoles any more, my next door neighbours has a pond in their garden and we are getting unindated with frogs of all sizes which has got my cats all in frenzy catching them making these poor frogs really squeal, my youngest cat is only 11mths old so its all new to him, he carries the frogs around the garden in his mouth -- yuk!  Its down to my husband to save them I just bear to touch them, they look slimey but I know they are not.      :-)

[ursula62]

Frogs are protected species now and collecting frogspawn or tadpoles is, I think, frowned upon if not illegal.

[Trillipse]

really? good grief. what's to become of the world...

i hear you can get slapped with an ASBO for violating the most recent EU conventions on the recommended length of daisychains too...