On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 10:47:50 +0100, Sacha wrote
(in article ) :

On 1/4/07 08:46, in article , "Charlie
Pridham" wrote:


"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
For the first time ever, we have absolutely no toad spawn in our pond.
The
frog spawn has either been killed by frost or taken by a heron, so this is
NOT our best year!
snip

Our toads usually lay theirs down deep so we never see the spawn just the
little black tadpoles later, but like you no frog spawn to be seen, same as
last year but we had plenty of tadpoles last year frog and toad, so I am
guessing that if the frogs think it may be cold they too go deeper and our
toads are always weeks later than the frogs.

I hope there is some further down but so far, there's no sign of it. Of
course, our trouble is the number of fish in that pond, so if we do get tads
we want to move some to the wildlife pond. But usually we see the strings
of toad spawn quite easily and after all, the winter has been pretty mild.
We now have 3 largeish ponds in the garden, so we're certainly doing our bit
for the amphibian world!

Your visiting Heron may well have had some adults but I did not realise they
would take spawn.

We're assuming that's what happened, though nobody actually saw it happen.
Ray saw the heron on the front lawn by the new pond there but while it could
grab any fish silly enough to swim to the edge, there's no way it could wade
into that pond. Next morning when he went out to the 'old' fishpond he
chased the heron off, all the fish had gone into hiding and a very large
clump of spawn was missing, so the evidence piles up. ;-)

We have the opposite experience :-) An absolutely bumper year for frogspawn
and hundreds of tadpoles all milling round now, and we have seen toadspawn
this year for the first time in this pond.

Do you have wild ducks in the area Sacha? In our experience they will come
for a tasty breakfast when the frogspawn is around, and they may be the
culprits. We protected our frogspawn by a corrugated plastic sheet just laid
over the edge (not touching the water in other words) and held down with
bricks overnight when a bad frost was forecast, and now have a piece of
chicken wire again just over the edge to protect them from ducks. Once they
swim away from where they have hatched, they will have plenty of places to
lurk.

Your fish may of course also be the culprits; we have no fish in our wildlife
pond to predate on the spawn or tadpoles.



--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
bed and breakfast near Ludlow: http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk
Burne-Jones/William Morris window in Shropshire church:
http://www.whitton-stmarys.org.uk