Mallee Frog Blog

About a week after the first 35mm, we had another 45mm over a couple of days. That caused some grain damage, but has created frog heaven. The dam has been as full as I've ever seen it (after rain) - at least 60cm of water with most of the winter vegetation submerged.

Frogs have been calling crazily each night since then, mostly the Pobblebonk and Spotted Marsh Frogs, although we did hear some Spadefoot calls early on. They can be heard kilometres away. A real audio beacon for other frogs. There have been few calls from the pond (maybe I just can't hear them!). I haven't had a look for a week but when I went down to the dam this morning there were at least three egg masses, all on the eastern side of the dam. The water will be thick with tadpoles soon.

Over the last week we've had an amazing 45mm of rain, which has put some more water into the dam and renewed calling from the frogs there. Spotted marsh frog calls mainly, but I think I hear the odd spadefoot as well.

The pond frogs have faith in the season and have spawned again - this their sixth batch of eggs for 2009. These ones (photo below) seem smaller than the others I've seen - not sure why that is. 

The tadpoles on the back verandah have been growing and the rain seemed like an ideal opportunity to release some back into the dam. I did this on Saturday afternoon (photos below). There seem to be 39 of them in the bowl that we put back in. For a little while they were stunned, perhaps because the water was a bit colder than what they came out of, but soon they started nibbling on the bottom and getting back into the swing of tadpole life. I hope that some of them survive to make froglets. They are already getting back legs and will probably enjoy the dam environment better than the glyphosate containers (despite the carefully constructed shelves for them to rest on).

Crikey! Those frogs are keen. This morning there is another egg mass in the pond. Very subtle, only a blob of foam about the size of a 20 cent piece. Most of the eggs are well below the water level.

I had a look in the dams at Manangatang on Sunday morning but couldn't see anything - which doesn't mean anything's there. I also haven't been able to see anything in our dam here. If they are going to be laying eggs, I just hope they put them somewhere near the center of the dam, because the outside is drying out. In the next few days we have to decide whether to start putting water back into the dam or not, which will depend on how many mosquito wrigglers are in there. I'll have to go out at night to get a proper idea - can see a few around in daylight so not a good sign.

Looks like we will definitely have tadpoles in the pond.

Whoo hooo!!!

We have our first spawn for the season. There must be at least 3 male spotted marsh frogs in the pond (they've been carrying on these past few nights) and today we found some evidence that they'd achieved something:

  We're going to need binoculars to spot spawn in the dam - there's just too much stuff in there to get a good look at the water surface, and the spawn this year doesn't seem to be as obvious (perhaps because it rained last night).