Frozen Spawn

It looks as though some of the frog spawn has frozen during the cold snap and become unviable, having gone an unpleasent white colour. But the stuff which was at the bottom of the clumps may be alright. In truth, we've not had much luck with frog spawn over the years as we tend to have lots of tadpoles which then fail to develop into frogs; a problem which many people have but about which there seems to be no agreement as to root cause. While it's been very cold here again, it hasn't been as freezing so let's hope this is the end of the iced over pond for this year and that some of the spawn will hatch okay. Perhaps a jar on the kitchen windowsill might be an idea...

Lots and lots of birds in the garden still, including regular appearences by the long-tailed tits. No sign of any exploring the nesting boxes yet, but I'm hopeful.

Frogspawn!

I went down the garden on Sunday, while cleaning out the terrapin tank, and saw that the pond was well supplied with frog spawn. There had been none earlier in the week so it must have been laid in the previous couple of days. Then later in the day there were loads of mating frogs so there is now even more! The only problem is that we've had a cold snap this last day and the pond has frozen - let's hope some of it has survived, the opinion online seems to be that generally some of the spawn survives freezing even though a lot doesn't. Keep you posted...

Spadgers

It was the week of heat one of the primary schools nature quiz, and Sue was team manager. They camme second but none of it can be held at the door of herself who moved heaven and earth as part of her preparation for this event - the number of flash cards and information sheets she's made and the time she put in working with the kids was epic. They're hoping they may get through to the next round as a highest scoring loser as they did really well.

The feeder visitors this week have included a lot of house sparrows, which also love those fat balls with insect bits in them. We need to be nice to sparrows these days as they're not as numerous as they were when I was younger - we used to have one of the old fashioned red nets full of peanuts and it was usually covered in sparrows. The long-tailed tits have been around a lot, as have blue tits and great tits. I'm hoping for use of the nestboxes this year!