April 12th, 2006
wood frog eggs
This afternoon, I donned tall rubber boots and went for a wade up the drainage ditch to search for Wood Frogs (Rana sylvatica) and their eggs. It didn’t take long to find the first egg mass which measured 10 to 12 cm. across and was floating in water about 25 cm. deep. Frogs were heard clacking in the immediate vicinity (see last night’s post about the frogs to listen to a sound recording). Temperature today hit a high of 20C. (70F), and the forecast is for +10C (+50F) for the rest of the week. I expect that the eggs will develop fairly quickly if the temperature remains mild. In past years, I’ve seen the eggs and even young tadpoles survive a sudden frigid spell which would send the temperature below the freezing point and cause the egg masses or developing tadpoles to be encased in some ice. It seems that most pull through, although development can be greatly slowed. Obviously the eggs and tadpoles share at least some of the freeze-tolerance of the adult frogs of this species. I’ll try to continue posting update photos to follow the progress of the tadpoles. With any luck, they won’t be decimated by the wild ducks that sometimes visit the ditches in search of food at this time of the year!
April 12th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
I look forward to a series of pix on the development of the eggs. I hope you can pull it off.
April 13th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Great photo! I am still trying to sneak up on a Wood Frog, Spring Peeper, or Chorus Frog as all are singing all around us in small ponds to the east and west of our house. I have yet to see one this season, let alone try to photograph one.
April 13th, 2006 at 11:20 am
I love frog and toad eggs. As you say, they develop very quickly, depending on temperature. Soon (in hours, maybe) you can see the tiny embryos atop their yolk, and in a few hours they’ll take on a definite tiny tadpole shape, floating blissfully in their globe of nutrients.
April 13th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
pablo - I’m hoping to be able to keep shooting photos until the tadpoles hatch and disperse. I do have photos from previous years, but I thought it would be fun to try to do a sort of “live” progress report on them over the next few days. In fact, I’ll be heading back to the ditch in my rubber boots later this afternoon.
O.W. — Yes, it’s very difficult to sneak up on singing frogs. I’ve been able to see these Wood Frogs, but the problem is that they become quiet as soon as they hear me coming, so there’s no soundtrack to go with video, so I haven’t yet bothered to shoot anything. In 2002, I did shoot quite a bit of video of breeding Wood Frogs where birch trees shade the a pool of water here at my farm. I had to be quite stealthy about it and crawled to the pond edge on hands and knees. If I had stood up, that would have been the end of things. I may edit a bit of the footage into a QT movie and post it here on the blog as it might be of interest to some people who have never seen breeding Wood Frogs.
Wayne - Yes, I love watching the progress of frog and toad eggs too. It’s really neat to see the developing tadpoles wiggling around inside the egg mass. I’ll definitely try to get a few shots and maybe even a bit of QT footage.
April 15th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Out at our west pond I found several masses of eggs that look like the ones in your photo. I know, by sound, that there are Wood Frogs, Chorus Frogs, and Spring Peepers there. What are chances that I have Wood Frog eggs? Do you know if the other two species have similar egg masses?
I spent about 40 minutes sitting still last night by the pond. (It may be a record of non-movement for me.) Anyway, by then all the frogs were sounding off but could I see even one? No! I am sure that some Peepers were within one metre of where I was sitting but I could not find any of them. Sigh!
April 15th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
O.W. — if you’ve been hearing Wood Frogs quacking in that pond, I’d say the chances are pretty good that the eggs you’ve found belong to them. They’re fairly conspicuous and there are usually quite a few masses around if you’ve got any size of population of frogs in the pond. Here, I usually find them in a few cm. of water — often in places where there is brush like willow, dogwood, etc.. growing. As the tadpoles grow so quickly, the eggs are often found in pools or ditches that will be dry by late summer. Peepers have very tiny eggs as the frogs are so very small. Regarding seeing these frogs calling, I’ve never been able to photograph them when they’re peeping, although I expect the way to do so would be to go out at night with a red flashlight — a lot of creatures are more approachable that way - find them, and then shoot the photos with a good flash unit. I’ve noticed that a lot of the photos of calling Peepers look like they were shot at night, so I expect that’s why. In daylight, the frogs seem shy and remain very quiet if they so much as hear my approach. Most peepers that I’ve photographed were found in summer and autumn, mainly by chance when I’ve been looking for land snails and other small creatures. I haven’t photographed Peeper eggs, but did find one photo online — I hope the link works. As can be seen by the pencil point in the photo, these eggs would be pretty tiny indeed. Chorus frogs are also quite small. I did find a photo of them online as well on this webpage. I’m currently trying to add more frog egg and tadpole photos to my own photo collection, so I’ll be out wading around in ponds a bit over the next few days to see what I can find. If I come up with some good shots, I’ll post them.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:01 am
[…] It’s not that there’s much snow - just a scattering really - and it will no doubt turn to rain later today — but the sight of even a little white stuff does become tiresome after awhile. Just yesterday, I was thinking of how things were finally starting to green up a little. The buds on the poplars are beginning to swell. I found two Woolly Bear caterpillars wandering over the grass, and brought one indoors along with some suitable foodstuffs. I also checked the drainage creek for signs of Wood Frog activity, but there was nada. A year ago today, some of you may remember me writing of finding Wood Frog eggs in the creek. Such is not the case this year. So far, the frogs have yet to put in an appearance. It looks as though it will be a late spring, which will definitely present some challenges for the Blogger Bioblitz coming up in a little over a week’s time. […]