of frogs and ponds

I promised to talk a little more about our tadpoles a few posts back. And I'm here to make good on that promise!

We've had a fun few weeks watching our tadpoles develop, setting up an environment for them, learning about frog development, reading about ponds, visiting various frog ponds to identify the types of frogs living there, and releasing our own froglets when they get to the insect-eating stage of their lives.

At first it was hard to tell our tadpole species apart -- they were pretty much all the same shape, size and color. (See the first photo and tell me if YOU can see any difference!) But the differences became apparent pretty quickly -- the tiny spring peepers quickly sprouted legs and shrank their tails and became froglets ready to be realeased within a couple of weeks. What we're left with now are....well, we're not sure! About ten individuals of some other species of frog. The tadpoles were the same size as the peeper tadpoles when we collected them, but they've not even started growing back legs yet -- they just keep eating, and growing, and eating, and growing....we're going to have to wait until they develop further to identify them!

This is the tank we set up for them. It's a 10 gallon aquarium tank, and is about 75% shallow water, with a couple of deeper places at the far edge, and about 25% above water so that the frogs can climb out of the water when they are ready. We've noticed that the froglets start playing around with coming out of the water for short amounts of time even though they still have tails a day or two before they emerge completely. Must be working on their developing lungs!

That small jar on top of the tank is what we use to transport the froglets to the frog pond to release. It has a couple of small stones in it for the frogs to climb out on, and also a small bit of pond water because sometimes we release emerging frogs if we know we won't be getting to the pond again within the next couple of days. Since we're not catching bugs for frogs to eat, we need to move them out when they are ready because there's nothing for them to eat in the tank.

Here's what the inside of the tank looks like -- we gather some native pond plants (only those that are dislodged and washed ashore from storms, as it's not legal to collect these from the wild) to give the tadpoles a more natural habitat. Little did we know, but they actually eat the pond plants! Those leaves wind up with little track marks in them, and the tadpoles have much prefered their natural foods over the goldfish flakes that our books on tadpoles told us to feed them, so we've had to replace the leaves occassionally. Makes sense, I guess! The funny thing is, these plants are washed ashore and half-dead when we collect them, yet they are flourishing in our tank, some are even preparing to bloom. I guess we've set up a good pond habitat!

A bullfrog in it's natural habitat, taken at one of our pond visits. I've got my fingers crossed that these tadpoles might be bullfrog tadpoles, as it can take up to two years for them to mature out as frogs, and bullfrogs would emerge large enough to eat small crickets, which we could buy at a pet store, so we could hang onto the adult frogs for a bit and complete our lifecycle study. There are plenty of bullfrogs in the pond where we got our tadpoles, so there's hope! Then again, with about a dozen species of native frogs, I guess chances are more likely they are something else. We've been having fun taking guesses at what they might be -- Zoo Boy feels they must be Pickerel Frogs, J is hoping for Wood Frogs. We all sort of hope they are toads, as then we could release them in our pastures instead of at the pond. It is possible to buy tadpoles of many native species at aquatic garden stores, so we may eventually look into that, especially if we decide to create an outdoor frog pond habitat in our yard. (An appealing thought, but probably a bit too much work given the age of the kids right now -- we'll probably file that thought under "future projects".)

And here's my favorite frog pond, in a nearby state forest, and the place where we're releasing our froglets. If we do decide to create our own pond, I'm going to use this one as my model!

Amongst our favorites of the books we've been reading on the frog/pond topic are:

Tale of a Tadpole, by Barbara Ann Porte, illustrated by Annie Cannon. The development of a toad from the persective of a young girl and her family, ends with her deciding to release the toad in her garden. Nice story, a little corny, but presents the facts of development in a less formal format than most books on the topic.

From Tadpole to Frog, by Wendy Pfeffer, illustrated by Holly Keller. This is one of those Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science books that I've mentioned before. So it's a little fact-heavy (though not so much as some of their other books), but it's simplistic and does tell the story of bullfrog development with illustrations in each stage. At the end it illustrates and discusses the other common species of frogs. We liked it enough to buy it.

The rest of our books are general pond study books:

Around the Pond: Who's Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George. GORGEOUS book, nice story, great illustrations, a bit of mystery, a bit of mapping, everything a kid would love. A big-time favorite here!

Beaver Pond Moose Pond, by Jim Arnosky. As I've mentioned before, this is one of my favorite children's authors, so you won't be too surprised that several of his books will be listed here. This one is my favorite of the group. Not only are his illustrations lush, but he's so careful to include various integral pieces of the environments he's writing about, you get a sense of the fullness of the habitat without it being drummed into your head. In this story, you get to see many of the different species that utilize a beaver pond.

Otters Under Water, by Jim Arnosky. Ditto to the above! Just a lovely, simple story about otters in their natural aquatic habitat.

Raccoon On His Own, by -- you guessed it! -- Jim Arnosky. I may have already mentioned this books previously, and it's more about a slow moving stream/river than a pond, but the aquatic life is pertinent to our topic, and the story is of a raccoon's somewhat accidental exploration of it's environment, but with the strong sense/illustration that his family is still nearby supporting him. Great message for kids my guys' age in addition to exploring the aquatic habitat.

Given that we've still got the tadpoles (who knows for how long!) and that we're about to start spending afternoons at the local lake, I'm guessing our pond theme may continue most of the summer in one form or another. Ok by me! I like getting my feet wet.