Over the last several years, I’ve dug 4 ponds in my backyard and encouraged the inch-long, small native chorus frogs to breed there, especially in the two ponds I left fishless.
After I put in the fishless ponds, the frogs began arriving and breeding every early Spring, by the scores. More frogs came each year, and they even recolonized the ponds that had fish, despite the risk of getting eaten up.
This year, my original,older fishless pond, dubbed the Frog Mitigation Area, swiftly filled up with mating frogs.
However, this Spring the chorus frogs left quickly, within a few weeks. In past years they hung around for a couple of months. This Spring the Non native bullfrogs had attacked the chorus frogs’ breeding grounds, probably spurring the chorus frogs’ retreat.
Even still, perhaps 1000 chorus frog eggs still hatched into tadpoles in the older pond, much like past years.
The second, newer pond in the Frog Mitigation Area, for some reason, attracted just a frog or two this Spring, as opposed to a dozen or so last year when I dug it out.
I moved a couple hundred chorus frog eggs out of the ponds with fish, into this newer fishless pond. But very few eggs ever hatched. And one morning I saw a greasy slick on the pond water. I don’t know what it was. I skimmed the oily sheen off, but afterwards I didn’t see any tadpoles for several days. Then I saw only a few; less than 10, from about 200 eggs. One of the pond plants also died, but that could happen for many reasons.
The older pond in the Mitigation Area never got oily, but heavy rains caused it to overflow one evening. Since then, I seldom saw even a single tadpole in the older pond. I can guess that some tadpoles were swept away when the pond overflowed, but most of the tadpoles should have hunkered down. Nonetheless, the old pond seems empty of tadpoles.
Meanwhile, in the newer pond, the scant handful of tadpoles have started to morph into frogs; growing legs and shedding their tails. To my pleasant surprise, there now appears to be perhaps 20 tadpoles in the newer pond, although I never saw more than 10 there all Spring.
In past years, I’d had hundreds of morphing tadpoles. This year, perhaps two dozen have survived.
I’d been worried about this year, since I’d had toxic chemicals sprayed on the pear tree that arched about the ponds in the Frog Mitigation Area. I tarped over the ponds for the spray treatment and the tadpoles seemed fine afterwards.
So I am happy to see several froglets morphing ahead of schedule.
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