Tadpoles

Spring is moving so fast I don't even have time to edit the photos from one day before something new and awesome happens on the next. I may do a bunch of posts that are long on photos and short on text. As if that were a bad thing!

The Wood Frog eggs we saw on April 16 in the Frenchman's Hill fire pond have hatched into tiny tadpoles about 1/4" to 1/2" long. They must have hatched at least a few days ago because they were swimming all over the place. The eggs turned greenish a couple of weeks ago (which is normal) and algae has started to grow in the pond: see how much murk is in the water now?

When the tadpoles stop moving, they lie on their sides and you can see the translucent tail structure. There are two not-tadpoles in this shot; I think those are mosquito larvae.

The eggs we saw along the Hemlock Road on April 17 have also hatched:

This brood is younger than the Frenchman's Hill crowd: they are still clustered tightly around their egg sacs.

 And just to keep things interesting, a new crop of egg masses appeared sometime in the last week:

 They are big blobs of jelly and you have to look hard to see the eggs inside. I think these might be salamanders!