Tag Archives: Tree frog

Tree frog tadpoles

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With the heat, and the need to tend the vegetables, I’ve rather neglected the pond this year. I haven’t spent as many hours just sitting nearby looking for frogs and enjoying the plants. Today I walked back to take a look, and discovered that we have tadpoles! And I hadn’t seen ones like this before, with orangish tails. Doing a little internet research, I discovered that these are tree frog tadpoles. They have the capacity to color their tales when they are exposed to predators like dragonfly nymphs, which we are also likely to have in the pond. Amazing! According to researchers, the orange tails protect them by the tails being targeted by predators, rather than more vulnerable parts of their bodies. I do remember when the tree frog was calling its distinctive song from the pond earlier in the season.

very round tadpoles with orange tails in greenish water

Meanwhile, our water lilies have been really healthy this season, and another strange color phenomenon has taken place there. We have white water lilies, but one has turned pink around the edges. I couldn’t find any explanation for this color change.

water lily, white petals, yellow center, and pink lower petals, surrounded by green round leaves in water

Despite my neglect, the pond seems to be thriving this season. We’ve had lovely marsh marigolds, and blue flag irises in their turn, as well as sweetflag, and the arrowhead plants are abundant. They bloom later. The lily pads are more numerous than in prior years, which helps to cool the water and make safe places for tadpoles. These mysteries of life and beauty feed my spirit during troubling times.

pond with abundant green lily pads and a few flowers blooming, with reed like plants behind.

Breeding Tree Frogs and Robins

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Tree frog with nobbly skin, perched on rocks with water of the pond visible on the left
Tree frog male, getting ready to sing his mating trill

Our first frog sighting in the pond yesterday, April 15! Much earlier than the last two years, when the first frogs came in June or July. It turned out to be a tree frog, rather than the green frogs that we’ve seen in prior years. We figured it out because in the afternoon, when my friend Francesca and I were sitting by the pond for a visit, suddenly, he sang the most amazing trilling sound, his white throat patch blowing out and in. And I remembered that Margy had heard that sound earlier in the day. Then, yesterday evening after dark, the night air was awash in these trilling calls, from all directions. A little internet searching identified those calls as tree frog mating calls.

Tree frogs live in trees, like their name suggests, and hunt on land most of the year, but they breed in water, in ponds and vernal pools. So maybe, just maybe, we’ll have some tadpoles to grow in our pond this spring. I learned that they eat algae, so that is another good, because our pond has got a bit too much algae in it. So exciting!

The other adventure of breeding is that of our robin pair. Even after three failed attempts to rear live young from eggs in a nest on the beam under the clear roof of our back porch, they were at it again, bringing nesting material to the same spot. That spot was just too hot in summer. It was so sad. So, first I tried telling them to go somewhere more suitable! Then I tried taking out the grasses to discourage them that way. But they kept at it. So then, I had a totally alternative idea. What about making something to shade that corner of the clear plastic roof? So it wouldn’t be so hot. This morning, I searched around and found some old cream-colored sturdy curtain material, and cut it to fit. Then I got up on a ladder and stapled it tightly to the wooden crossbeams.

I have already seen the robins return with more nesting material, so maybe they’ll put up with the changes to their location. After all, I had also painted the beams last fall. Now I am hoping that it will be enough–that the shade will keep the spot from getting too hot, that the robins can finally have a little family, in their chosen spot. And can I say that my heart is filled with joy after this little project? Some kind of ecstasy to help a fellow inhabitant of this place, to live together in mutual reciprocity.

A square of crossed beams, painted white, with a cream colored shade cloth over the top, and grassy nest material showing above the lower beam.
Robins’ nest beginnings under the shade cloth