Metamorphosis

The warmer weather has certainly helped our frogspawn, the tiny black dots began to elongate - hooray! the spawn's still alive.

Even better, today there are wrigglings and swimmings. They are only about 5 or 6mms long so it was not until I had taken many photos and seen them enlarged that I realised that they are showing gills, the first stage of metamorphosis before the lungs develop. In fact, they look like proper, though tiny, tadpoles!!!

Consequently the choice of our walk today was determined by the need for more pondweed for our Better Makeshift Tadpools, so we took in Straiton pond. It's a local nature reserve on the site which provided clay for local brickworks. The vegetation is mainly of reeds but in a backwater we found enough weed to spare a couple of roots.

I don't know what the weeds are but we now have four or five different species, from earlier walks and I hope they'll provide enough food and shelter for my babies until their diet becomes carnivorous.