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Post by NellyDee on May 14, 2019 9:40:59 GMT
While idling watching my pond life, I realised that frog tadpole act differently to toad tadpoles. The frog ones swim all over the pond even out to the deepest parts. Apart from being much bigger the toad ones stay near to the edges and use their camaflage colouring to snuggle down either under the sand or debris around the edges with just their heads showing. You do not realise they are there unless you catch a bit of movement. I thought I was looking a small black pebbles at first. This is one I managed to get a photo of when it moved across to another patch where it could hide. Also in the photo, top left is what looks like a snail? Is it?  Toad tadpole Snail 13 May 2019 by Helen Skelton, on Flickr |
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Post by aeshna5 on May 14, 2019 19:27:51 GMT
Looks like a frog tadpole to me, toad tadpoles should be much blacker.
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Post by NellyDee on May 15, 2019 8:01:45 GMT
I beg to differ. All the hundreds of frog tadpoles in my pond are half the size and at the moment black and swim around, the chap in the photo who is large in comparison stays almost in the same place hiding. They do look black when just their heads are showing, but when they move they are deep brown and very speckled, but do give the impression of being black.
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Post by aeshna5 on May 15, 2019 17:19:22 GMT
You're free to disagree but I've just taken a look at the Froglife website + it states that toad tadpoles are JET black + also emphasises they remain that way. Clearly not what your photo shows where it is obviously brownish.
To me it doesn't make much sense that the frog tadpoles would be much smaller when generally the frogs start breeding at least 2-4 weeks earlier than the toads. Appreciate you have a different climate so not sure how much time elapses between the two species spawning?
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Post by NellyDee on May 16, 2019 11:12:17 GMT
Both at the same time, the strings of toad spawn were intermingle,sort of with the frog spawn, actually it looked like some of the frog spawn was below toad but difficult to tell as heavy wind had probably blow both together along the bay one side of the pond. I will bow to your knowledge, but it does not expalin the differerence in behaviour,size and colour of the teddies in my pond.
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Post by aeshna5 on May 16, 2019 17:07:44 GMT
The good thing is that you have a thriving amphibian population. So many down here seem to have disappeared. I'm particularly sad about the collapse of my frog population.
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