The long wait.

Over the second winter the frogs all seemed to disappear. The fish were gone but I kept tending the pond. I had heard that it may take years for a pond to start producing tadpoles, anyway dragonflies larvae were developing and taking care of the mosquitoes. I had also put my name down on a local tadpole program where people with excess tadpoles or unwanted taddies give them away to people nearby hoping that a suitable donor would appear.

Here's our frogless frog pond.

http://202.14.152.30/frogwatch/pages/tadpole_exchange.asp

This is the link if you are in Western Australia to go on the tadpole exchange program. I wonder if there are others like this around the world?

Then with the spring, nearly two years after bringing home the tadpoles I heard the marvelous sound of a motorbike frog. It was an exciting moment but the excitement turned to pity for the frog as it seemed to keep calling day and night for weeks and sounded so lonely. I had grave doubts that any other frog was around to hear it.

This link takes you to a recording of their call which sounds just like a dirt bike changing up gears. Well worth a listen.

http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/frogwatch/pages/frogs/sw/10.asp

In the meantime the neighbour who breeds Koi (a foreign enemy of frogs) had told me he had found a frog in his Koi pond that was being attacked by his fish. He had rescued it and thought he could help the frog by putting it down a storm drain so it would find a swamp somewhere.

I know he meant well, he just didn't know drains are not pathways to earthly heavens for frogs but lead to pipes that release into the ocean. I felt all was lost.

Then a few days later I could hear three motorbike frogs calling from his back yard. Why his backyard?? At least I knew there were frogs about.

Then on my Dad's birthday I was looking into the pond - pondering and there was something that looked like a tadpole. I thought it must have been a tiny twig and poked it. Sure enough it moved. There were hundreds of little tadpoles. What a wonderful, joyful sight. This photo is taken after two weeks of growth.