One of the best things you can do at home for wildlife is to build a pond and pond life doesn’t get much more exciting than frogs.
This time of year, my kids and I are so excited to see when we get our first spawn. Seeing my excited children stroking frogs and poking spawn is something so special.
The lifecycle of a frog is one of nature’s wonders. Anyone with young children absolutely must have a pond. Engaging kids with the natural world, helping them understand seasons and lifecycles is vital education.
Frogspawn appears in ponds from January onwards, depending on the weather and the region. For the last 10 years or so my spawn has always come in March but it’s been getting earlier with research showing a 10C rise in temperature equating to a 1°C day advance in frogspawn.
This year was my first ever February spawn (17th Feb). It’s great to start checking out your pond from January onwards especially at night time. Frogs can breed between two and three years old and they very often go to the pond where they were born.
The males attract the females by croaking and then the male will attach himself to the back of a female to guarantee he fertilises her spawn. There’s only two native species of frog in the UK, the common frog (I’m talking about here) and the pool frog which is extremely rare and there’s only one small reintroduced population in Norfolk.
If you’ve seen spawn you can report it here by taking part in this citizen science project https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeKNFBKXHlup0KVnDguzZj5PI_n_Zx7kO0LpU2b_gWLsyKQMA/viewform?pli=1
If you don’t have a pond build one and this time next year you may have little tadpoles and excited children.
Thanet nature expert Nik Mitchell runs the Get Wild page on facebook
