I have been checking the newly laid frogspawn in the wildlife pond, over the last week or so, and been dismayed to see the tadpoles failing to develop and the jelly beginning to cloud and disintegrate.
It looked like this :-
You can see that the tadpoles are all 'full stops', just as they were when they were laid. They are, sadly, dead and will not develop further.
I decided to have a gentle rummage in the pond and see if all was as bad as I feared. There were about a dozen clumps of frogspawn, some laid on top of others. It is always laid in shallow water, but some was in slightly deeper water. In the deeper water, underneath another clump, I finally found some which looks very hopeful :-
Now these little fellas are not 'full stops' by any stretch of the imagination, much more like commas. This means that they should be developing into tadpoles.
I gently removed the clump in a net and put it in a container with some weed, which the tadpoles will cling to and eat as soon as they completely hatch.
I put the container in a shady spot in the greenhouse, where it will be protected from the extremes of the temperature outside, but not cooked by the sun. Once the weather improves and the pond warms up a little I will put them back in their natural environment. Mind you, I have a friend who keeps hers in a separate container within her pond until they are fully developed. This protects them from predators until they are able to jump away from danger pronto !! I may try that this year as so much frogspawn will have perished - we need all the little froglets we can get !
