Just had a Walk round Watergrove Reservoir in Wardle. There were in 4 different places including the small pond above the Res masses of Frogs all in a breeding frenzy. At least 150+ in the pond all croaking away and large quantities of spawn in evidence.
Throughout late February there was plenty of Frog action in my small garden pond.
But the amount of spawn laid is disappointing - only one small clump. It looks as though there were plenty of males but a shortage of fertile females.
Anyone else noticed similar?
Cheers, John
I had 50+ frogs and enough spawn to account for the amount of activity! Still going strong today, I watched a frog with missing front limbs making its way across the lawn too!
The opposite in my garden John. When we had the very severe Winter a couple of years ago I lost many frogs to the cold. Last year I put heaters in my main pond to minimise the losses and when the spawn hatched I set up two aquariums and cleaned out my smaller pond and fed them just so more tadpoles would survive turning into frogs.
This year numbers are about 30 spawning females and between 80-90 males. This is quite a healthy population for my small garden and it also helps that a couple of my neighbours have ponds in their gardens containing small numbers of frogs which visit my garden.
I just hope that my wife never finds out why our electric bill was a lot higher than normal last Winter. I blamed the washing machine
For those interested i've put some photos on my blog showing the sheer diversity in the colour of the different frogs. They're brilliant little animals!