Our ponds are another place to raise young
Amphibians
We were thrilled to have three pairs of toads mate in our ponds. It was wonderful to hear their musical trills for weeks and to see their antics in the ponds. It was fascinating to watch the development of the babies from tiny eggs to little toadlets. We can't wait to see how many pairs we have next year and to watch "our" toads develop through the years.
Now we were finally able to sign up for Frogwatch USA, a citizen science project of the National Wildlife Federation and the US Geological Survey. (Of course, you don't have to have your own pond. You can choose any site to monitor.)
Here are three of the toads. Note that the one in the middle is "singing." They're actually quite musical and is a very pleasant sound. Generally, toads don't stay out in the open as much as they did during this mating season.
Here is one mating pair in our wildlife pond in April. Note the long string of "black pearls" that are the eggs. The male is on top of the female and is smaller than she is. (The lighting is odd because the photo was taken early in the morning.)
A few days later. Note the jelly-like substance surrounding each egg.
Note the three toads in our pond skimmer. At one point all three pairs were here. I scooped them out, though, since I figured the eggs would just get pulled into the pump and wasted.
They like the moist, dark environment especially when the weather was dry. (Usually the top of the skimmer is on). They didn't seem to mind staying there even when I scooped any extra plant material out of the skimmer.
We loved watching the frogs scoot around the pond. They're fast! And yes, he did climb up onto the lily pad!
The twelfth day
Twenty-one days
Here are some of the literally thousands of tadpoles in our wildlife pond. There were thousands more in our "regular" pond.
Here's a close-up. You can see some of the little zigzaggy legs that have emerged.
Here's one of - what we call - our "microToads." There were significantly fewer than the thousands of eggs and tadpoles we started with. This was taken on June 8. The toadlets are smaller than the tadpoles! They tended to leave the pond in rainy weather, making an exodus en masse and scattering throughout the yard. We rarely saw them after that. Starting with the thousands of eggs a few months before, we expect that at most we ended up with a few dozen little toads. They, of course, are an important food source themselves - I saw a catbird eating one with the little legs visible outside its beak. It's hard not to feel sad, but that's nature.
Insects
Twelve-spotted skimmer in the regular pond
Common green darner laying eggs in the wildlife pond
Here's a dragonfly larva in the skimmer. It's emerged from the water and probably will soon be transformed into a dragonfly.
July - Note the dragonfly larva on the leaf. For dragonflies, a pond and vegetation are places to raise young.
Here's a good article on protecting your dragonfly larvae when cleaning your pond. The article gives lots of specific tips, but here's the Big Idea: when pruning out or cleaning your pond, let the prunings sit at the edge of the pond or in a bucket for a while to give the larvae a chance to escape back into the water. Those are your future damselflies and dragonflies!
