Frogs spawn

You're right of course Suzi, but in a way we've intervened from the off by digging our ponds, excluding fish and generally encouraging - effectively farming - frogs in the first place.
It's still a long way from manipulating weather, IVF, GM crops, Gene Editing and attempting to reanimate dead pig's brains though eh?

I've seen newts voraciously chase and devour young frog tadpoles, and they will also gladly eat the egg 'dots' (but not the jelly) in the centre of freshly-laid frogs spawn. As the tadpoles grow though, they become a bit unwieldy.
In a fabulously busy and perfectly clear (yesss!!) amphibian pond (common frog, common toad, smooth newt and palmate newt easily observed) on a local nature reserve last week, i watched a male smooth newt chase, gobble - and swallow - a toad tadpole too. That was something i hadn't expected since a lot of predators leave those alone, finding them distasteful. Have seen fish for example, snap them up but within seconds they spit them back out again.

I remember reading once that some grass snakes will eat toads. Does Will, Gemma, Caleb or anyone know if there's a similar story of limited newt predation of toad tadpoles then, or do they all happily consume them (and i just haven't seen it happen before)?

Proudly presenting my first 'hand-reared' 2019 froglet!

Suzy - I feel the same about hedgehogs - the main 'carer' for the rescue wants to get every hog in that anyone sees, if only to give a it a once over and check for lungworm etc, whereas I am very much of the opinion we should let them live their lives naturally and only intervene if we identify there is a problem, of course by then it may be too late. There are positive and negatives to both options.

If the water isn't clear enough to tell, i wouldn't give up hope yet Gemma.
A few years ago all the spawn in one of my ponds disappeared shortly before i went away for 3 weeks. When i returned - to my delight - it was teeming with tadpoles.
Personally, i would have 'farmed' some spawn as insurance though. I completely understand why you and Suzy would adopt let-nature-take-it's-course, non-intervention stance, but humans have made these such difficult times for our herps that i don't see any harm in giving them a little 'leg up' here and there.
In addition to the 15 tadpoles (which now have hind legs) on my kitchen windowsill, i put some spawn (now small but free-swimming tads) in a huge aquarium that's standing near the pond in the garden. During the past week, 8 newts (all males) have scaled the 45 cm glass, negotiated the large, overhanging 'lip' at the apex, and dropped inside.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 



Edited by Liz Heard - 06 Apr 2019 at 11:33am

Suzy, I think it was me who sadly had thousands go over during a rainstorm a couple of years back - my solution to this problem is that the 'waterfall' only occurs in one small area so I have put in loads of thick plants which will hopefully act as a form of sieve and allow water through but stop the majority of tadpoles. We also had a lot of hail and rain last night and the pond did overflow as expected but no sign of any tadpoles going out, although I guess they are still too small to be at risk as they tending to stay at the other end of the pond to finish eating the jelly and some dead spawn.

Little concerned here as though we saw the spawn hatch, no signs yet of any free swimming taddies. Hope I don't live to regret not giving them a helping hand this year. Does very little to reassure me that the environment these days in rural East Anglia is a good place for common frogs.