A Frog Was Spawn

Seemingly massive amounts of frog spawn in the pond has now exploded into tadpoles. Frogs are my chief ally in the organic battle against slugs and snails and fortunately there always seem to be plenty in the pond each year. There are some interesting facts about frogs and toads on the BBC Springwatch site.

Here they are basking on some algae at the top of the pond. I guess they might be starting to eat it now:

Here's a close-up:

Most seem content sitting around at the moment, but they occasionally wriggle around a bit. Hopefully they should be fine now if we have a cold snap - I think it's generally just the spawn that gets frosted when it's so close to the surface. I think the snails are getting worried already.

The only downside I've noticed with frogs is that around dusk, in the summer, it's quite difficult to the see them and they have the capacity to scare the living daylights out of me when they suddenly leap out of vegetation or across a path - half because I'm worried about treading on them. Makes for interesting gardening, anyway; and it's well worth it for all the good they do. They look quite sweet in the pond too, bobbing up from under the lily leaves and doing a little bit of croaking now and again. Only about two percent of frogs survive to adulthood apparently, but it still looks like mine should be doing okay if that's the case.

Do you have any interesting frogs or toads in your garden? I saw a couple of small very dark-brown toads in the garden last year (it may well have been the same one twice) that I couldn't identify, because I'm sure there was a red-coloured stripe on each side. It may have been a common toad - but it may also have been a frog because it seemed to be hopping, not walking. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture.

Lunar Eclipse 03/03/07

Did anyone see the lunar eclipse last night? It was absolutely smashing, here in Wareham; the worrisome rainclouds of late afternoon gave way to a beautifully clear winter sky.

I was once really keen on astronomy and it's one of those things I seem to have found a lot less time for in adult life, however the draw of an eclipse or shooting stars in late summer - or the treat of a properly dark sky somewhere remote, rather than one over-burdened with artificial light - still fills me with tremendous excitement and fascination. To me, it's one of those precious life experiences quite similar to the feeling you get staring into a campfire or being absorbed in making something simple with your hands. You get that sense of connectedness, a sense of flow - a sense that these are the kinds of things people have done forever, they are hard coded into what we are.

I took some shots of the moon with my standard Olympus on a tripod, so I couldn't get in as close as I would have liked, but they came out as well as I could expect.

Here we are approaching total eclipse with just the top of the moon still to fall into shadow:



And now we are in near totality - the moon has that brilliant orangey-red glow, apparently from the light still being refracted through the earth's atmosphere:



A very pleasant way to spend a Saturday evening. I am currently trying to quell the urge to buy a new camera or lenses for this kind of thing, so am making do with all the brilliant efforts on Flickr.