Crime of missing tails probably solved.

Fish can be quite nasty to tadpoles, either eating them outright or nibbling away bit by bit. Since I have no fish the other suspect is dragonfly nymphs. They are plentiful in the pond and are voracious feeders of tadpoles.

Apparently if tadpoles have part of their tails eaten they can still morph successfully into an adult frog.

The image shows a dragonfly emerging from it's nymph casing.

What's happening to their tails?

Whilst clearing out plant overgrowths I noticed that a few of the tadpoles seemed to have shorter tails.

It almost looks as though they have had the last few millimetres bitten off. They don't swim with quite the same fluidity as those with standard tails.

I don't know if this is a normal variation of if something more sinister is at work.

Pool baskets and close shaves.

This frog and its' friend were lucky not to be squished when they decided to hide in the pool's filter basket.

The pool being somewhat green meant that my husband did not see them when he was inserting the basket back in. It was lucky one popped its' head up just as he was about to press the basket into place and undoubtably flatten the poor frogs before turning on the filter where ....

some thing just shouldn't be said.

Nearly one year old tadpoles.

While most the tadpoles last summer metamorphed into young frogs these tadpoles did not. Instead they lounged lazily at the bottom of the pond most of the winter. I didn't think they had survived but now with the warmer weather they are starting to become more active and at last are morphing.

I wonder if they have grown so fat by eating the other little tadpoles. I witnessed the tadpoles canibalising their same sized siblings last summer. I assume it's nature's way of controlling a population too large for the pond.


It was hard trying to measure them as I couldn't get the tape and tadpole out straight and operate a camera at the same time. I also imagine that they might have been a little longer if I had nabbed it before it had grown legs, but still you can see in the photo that it is 11.5 cm long with a bend in its tail.


If you look carefully in the next photo you can make a comparison between a three week tadpole of what I assume to be the same species (Litoria Moorei) and the one that is approximately 11 months old.