Lots of toad activity

Last weekend I took my long suffering husband for a Sunday afternoon stroll around some ponds. Whilst we didn't see any actual amphibians, we did find two ponds I didn't know were there; found one that was previously there had completely dried up; had a possible sighting of a newt; and we found frog spawn in some of the ponds.

The frogs in our own little garden pond have been active all week - with warmer weather we are now up to 14 clumps of frog spawn. I did a mock run of my correlation test from the initial results and it was totally meaningless, ie. zero correlation.  So I decided it was worth another trip to my project site to try and gather some more data, and it was worth it.

We found evidence of new frog spawn, with some in two pond where it wasn't present on the last visit. However, the big difference was the number of amphibians we saw.  In the first half dozen ponds, we found the odd toad here or there.  However in the seventh pond there were dozen of toads. Maybe it was just easier to see them - the water was clear, shallow, and the toads were very easy to see. They popped their heads up to say hello. The were very active an in a mating mood!

The next pond was the one where Robert thought he saw a newt last time. This time we saw a little frog spawn and two toads. Then I got a shout from Robert to say he saw the newt again! We didn't manage to catch it for a closer look as it was in the deeper water, but as they came up for air I think I saw a male and female, possible palmate newts. Definitely worth another visit to see if we can get a proper ID.  I had already put a newt egg strip in that pond (but there was nothing in it), so I stuck another one in for good luck.

Quite a successful trip!