Tuesday 26 February 2008

Brogaod

I realised that my query about frogs was a bit random (thank for answering Jimmy!) so I thought I should explain a bit more...

We have a pond, and every year, there is one night (or sometimes two) when hundreds of frogs come across our lane and go up to the pond. They mate and leave lots of frog spawn which then develops into tadpoles and then, at some point in the summer, I see lots of little baby frogs hopping across the garden field towards the lane.

I never see the frogs that come here to mate leave after mating. The past few days, Greg and I have seen a number of dead frogs around the pond. Is this a case of that they mate and then die? Or is something else killing them? Do ducks eat frogs? Do ducks eat frog spawn? The ducks weren't in the pond at this time last year...

And what do the frogs do all winter? Where do they go?

3 comments:

Moonroot said...

I think the ducks may eat the frogspawn, not sure about mature frogs. I don't think frogs die after mating. Could it be a heron?
As to the rest, ????

Jessica at Bwlchyrhyd said...

Let this be a lesson to myself that I should Google before asking questions...

It appears that ducks ARE in fact a predator of frogs and frog spawn... :(

Anonymous said...

Some species of ducks will eat frogs (mergansers, etc), but most dabbling ducks (black, mallards, etc) won't, or atleast they don't generally target them. Lots of things eat tadpoles of course. Herons love drogs.

Frogs, again, depending on the species, I'm speaking of the primarily aquatic species (bullfrog, leopard, etc) hiberanate underwater under the muck/detritus.