I love my pond, every morning I pop outside to see how the tadpoles are getting on - quite often while still in my dressing gown, so it's a good thing we have high fences!
They've mostly hatched now, but are still in the safety of the spawn mass. There are some fallen leaves in the water, so many are clustering in the shallow warmer water on the leaf surfaces.
Last year, when they got braver and moved into the shallow water at the shelving edge of the pond, where the water is warmer, a lot of them were picked off by the blackbirds :-(
The water boatmen took a lot too -so I spent many a happy hour getting in nature's way, scooping ot water boatmen and chucking them over the fence! They soon came back though.
Big excitement this morning - saw the first newt in our pond! I love newts even more than tadpoles, so I won't mind the newt picking off a few for lunch.
In our previous garden I spent hours watching newts do their courtship dance - it's really cute. they bend their tails back parallel to their bodies and wiggle it about - very sexy, if you're a lady newt. They develop beautiful orange chests too.
And then it's egg laying time. Unlike frogs, newt eggs are laid individually. The mummy newt grasps a pond leaf in her back legs, lays an egg and carefully wraps each egg in a leaf - so sweet! I'm looking forward to newt taddies - they develop front legs first, the other way around from frog taddies.
I'll stop now - sorry, I got carried away. Every now and then I miss teaching so much I can't help myself from presenting a lesson!
