Frog Spawn.

We’d not seen nor heard any sign of our resident frogs until there was a single solitary “plop” yesterday evening. This morning there was all this spawn. It’s difficult to partition this off into clumps, which is the international unit of frog spawn. Each mating pair lays just one clump a year; and it does so in a single night even though the pair remain coupled for up to a month. It is now Sunday morning (just) as I write this and there has been no addition but, it is my considered opinion that about a dozen pairs were responsible. I could, of course, check on Wikipedia how many eggs there are to a clump and then count the eggs and do the sums, but that may be going a little over the top. The frogs are still being a bit coy, but we have caught a glimpse of one or two disappearing into the murky depths as we approach. One thing is slightly worrying, although we see plenty of spawn and tadpoles, even the chappies with all four legs; we haven’t seen any sign of froglets hiding in the undergrowth around the pond for several years running. About five years ago, I did Blip Herself cutting the lawn with scissors in order to avoid separating their front legs from the back ones.