Frogsong in February

 Frogsongs in February

A cold February afternoon and the ponds are, thankfully, silent. A watchful, but frogless, heron took off as I arrived. Friends have seen them taking frogs already this year - from ponds in those warmer garden microclimates "just down the road" but here in this hollow of the hills on the edge of town, the cold still holds them all, frogs, toads and newts, asleep. 

But it IS February and further south and lower down, the frogs have started moving, the Toadwatchers of the Toad Patrols are polishing their boots and filing road closure requests (and getting national headlines!). Here I just hope the cold holds for a few weeks more: too often in recent years, there is a flurry of early wakefulness, and a hasty spawning before March snow or late frosts interrupts everything....

But it IS February and there have been those mornings when I wake up and the world smells full of the promise of frogsong and jellied spawn....

FROGSONG

Gordon MacLellan 

It is March and

This morning held a cold smell of spring

Of frogsong and wonder.

Reflections of blue skies and

Willow trees are

Broken by the weeds that break

The pond’s mirror.

There is movement,

A small turning, splashing

Disturbance,

But there is no-one to see.

The wind across the water

Traces deceptive arrows

And by the far bank,

A bigger movement

Sends a ripple, a wave spreading outwards

But still there is no cause to see,

No culprit to celebrate.

 

The pool settles again,

And me, I rest

Here on the grass, watching.

It is March and

I am still hoping for frogs.

 

NOTES

Frogsong was published as "A Pond in March"in Froglife's Autumn/Winter 2-024 edition of Natterchat

Froglife organises the national Toads on Roads initiative: https://www.froglife.org/what-we-do/toads-on-roads/

Waiting for the frogsong

 

 

 

FROGSONG

Gordon MacLellan 

It is March and

This morning held a cold smell of spring

Of frogsong and wonder.

Reflections of blue skies and

Willow trees are

Broken by the weeds that break

The pond’s mirror.

There is movement,

A small turning, splashing

Disturbance,

But there is no-one to see.

The wind across the water

Traces deceptive arrows

And by the far bank,

A bigger movement

Sends a ripple, a wave spreading outwards

But still there is no cause to see,

No culprit to celebrate.

 

The pool settles again,

And me, I rest

Here on the grass, watching.

It is March and

I am still hoping for frogs.

 

wriggling and hopping

 

Wriggling cheerfulness

celebrating amphibians

Toadspawn

A string of pearls

Dark necklace for green weeds

A gift of wriggling cheerfulness

With hops

How do you celebrate your amphibians?

(What do you mean, you don’t?) 

See yesterday's Singing on the Toad Bus 

This spawning season is always a good time to encourage people to reflect….frogs and toads are often among people’s first natural history memories: the (often ill-fated) tadpoles in a jar or tank or bowl at home or at school, the excitement of froglets hopping out into the world, the sheer wonder of those lifecycles. These spring days are times when people feel they can help: buckets, wellies and good will; a careful attending to the garden pond, making sure the local wild ponds are clear of debris. The summer horrors of lawnmowers and froglet migrations are another time to step in and be supportive (let the grass grow for a week or two)

If you are a dog walker, this is also a good time to please keep dogs out of the ponds. Just as you keep dogs under tight control where there are ground-nesting birds, on these precious days around spawning, think of your dog as a hairy foodmixer who’s just been switched on in the pond. It is also worth thinking about what tick treatments you use if you have a water-loving dogs. External, topical, treatments wash off in ponds  (=repeated treatment needed = more money + more risk for your dog) and can have grim consequences for pond-based invertebrates( as numbers of swimming dogs increases so does the pesticide level in the water….work it out yourself). Systemic tick treatments are much better – less destructive and needing less repeats!

And enjoy your pond!

Here is one “enjoyable pond” moment from local writer Mark Johnson

THE TOADS AT LIGHTWOOD

The toads came today 

In the same place 

And in the same way

They always do

Not quite

Two by two

But in a line

Crooked yet true

We always say 

They’ll be here next year

The sun will shine

And the sky will be clear

But the day may come

When they don’t appear

I know that thought

Is your greatest fear 

But as long as, Gordon

You are here 

As long as we fight

To save what’s dear

The toads will return

With their amphibian swing

Lightwood will croak 

Each and every spring

If you have  some amphibian moment to share (froglifers? Toad Patrollers?) do send them through and if I can, I’ll share them here! (creepingtoad@btinternet.com)

Over the years, this blog has featured lots of amphibian-centred posts. This link will take you to some of the pieces that came in for the Telling Toads initiative

With many thanks to:

• Mark for his poem
• Phots: all c/o G MacLellan

past watchful Toads

Watching Toads

a new Telling Toads piece

There have been lots of poetry posts recently...and here is another. This piece by Cherry Doyle is part of the Telling Toads* project and that is as much as I need to say, i think!

Toads

Cherry Doyle

‘Then one hot day when fields were rank

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs

Invaded the flax-dam'

Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist

The pond was my flax-dam; black hole into

the centre of the earth, in sticky shade

of conifer and stone, it sucked the light

straight from the leaves. And lurching from the soup

of night and algae, clods of earth upon

itself, with eyes as still as long-dropped beads -

the toads, fat sentinels of rock and pot.

A stoic throb of sides preceded feasts

on garden slimers. Silent plots were formed,

like patient Venus creeping through the dusk

their moon-curved shapes somehow familiar.

And morning, strung along the half-chewed leaves,

cascaded trails of silver carnage, long-

forgotten when the sparkling lace remained.

That summer drifted through the apple trees,

and lingered on the jagged edges of

the greenhouse, lit a treasure map across

the lawn, to crawlers making their escape

from every lifted pot and shifted leaf;

an emerald, a clutch of golden coins,

a secret hoard of gently muddied sun.

*Telling Toads is back to gather new poems and stories celebrating amphibians and reptilesWhy not have a look at the notes about what we are looking for and unleash your inner frogliness across a page or screen…..find out more, here

Photo credits:

Pool and tucked away toad: c/o G MacLellan

Toad's eye: detail from a picture by Kenny Taylor

Lizard's flicker, snake's slide

Puddocks and cruddles

Froglife and Creeping Toad part 2

Lizards flicker, snakes slide and crocodiles lie like old memories on riverbanks.  Frogs hop and toads may creep; a newt can hang suspended in a pool but few can ever compare with the enigmatic smile of an axolotl. Enjoy the wonder of a cold-blooded world!

a friendly frog from North Uist

Try playing with words, on a quiet moment of today, list the names you know for amphibians and reptiles. Then shuffle them, play with them, rearrange and read them aloud. Enjoy language. Recite them to yr friends and alarm your colleagues….use whatever languages you like

Frog and toad and natterjack, 
Puddock, taddies and cruddles, 
Lesair agus nathair, cnadan agus liugair

Over the week 6 - 13th October, Creeping Toad posted (at least) 2 posts a day in  "social media takeover" for Froglife. The first few days' posts became the blog post The Blink of a Golden Eye, the rest have been amalgamated to become this entry. There is an underlying theme of the proximity of hibernation, trying to catch the sense of impending sleep and the call that draws reptiles and amphibians to the safety of cool, dark places....
Froglife twitter: @froglifers
Froglife facebook: Froglife

Globally, many frogs and toads need help. The charity Save the Frogs campaigns internationally, supporting projects around habitat conservation and community education. Saturday April 25th 2020, will be the 12th Save the Frogs day.

Leptopelis from Malawi

"Conceived and coordinated by SAVE THE FROGS!, Save The Frogs Day is the world's largest day of amphibian education and conservation action. Our goal is to provide frog enthusiasts with educational materials, ideas and inspiration and empower them to educate their local communities about amphibians. Since 2009, SAVE THE FROGS! staff and volunteers have conducted over 1,400 educational Save The Frogs Day events in at least 56 countries around the world."
(Quote from the Save the Frogs website)

There will be a Creeping Toad StF Day event in Buxton. Plans are still dreaming with the hibernating toads: thoughts are wriggling around small sculptural landscape lanterns or huge pictures where people can draw themselves into a landscape on the same scale as a frog. Why don’t you join in and celebrate the wonderful world of anurans? What you do doesn’t need to be big or wild or ground-breaking. How about a tea-party of frog-shaped cakes? Those terrible rock-cakes your friend makes could easily become cheerfullly lumpy toads! How about a cake iced blue as a pond with marzipan water lilies and silver bauble frogspawn?

But to return to the dream of toads…

After the sleep, did you creep?
Did you hop? Cross a road with hope?
Did you swim? Did you stop?
Did you wait in the pond for the lover who never came?
What does it portend when the water is no longer your friend?
Ponds need care, need tending, need love for the frogs to thrive. And then they will use the ditch by the road!

But now….

The cold calls us now to sleep, folding limbs, closing eyes, toad folds into mud. A long slow silence in the dark and the damp. Winter dreaming is the home that holds us through the centuries. Shadowy peace in the echoing silence….

Photos: all these ones are by me, c G MacLellan

The blink of a golden eye

The blink of a golden eye

Froglife and Creeping Toad

Aha! This week, with a toadly creep and occasional froggy hops, Creeping Toad is taking over the Froglife twitter and facebook platforms. The aim is to add a different flavour to the regular Froglife posts and give their regular followers something perhaps a little unexpected to meet. For my regular followers, we hope that connecting to Froglife might bring you into a whole hoppy world of cool damp skin and the dry scales of reptilian cousins….

Because Twitter posts have to be so short and I’m a storyteller with a tendency to ramble, posting is an interesting execrise in shutting up but here I thought I would string those first posts together in their full form as a journey towards hibernation.

The season changes, autumn comes with witner a cloud on a horizon of blowing leaves

The summer is behind her. A spring of swarming waters and wriggling company, a season of damp grass and clambering, the slow learning of dangers and dinners and now a chill on the edge of awareness.

Watch as you garden for the summer’s small survivors: nature takes so many young amphibians, try not to add to the tally.

The darkness calls to froglet, toadlet and matriarch alike, an invitation to sink into ancient dreams, memories drifting down through centuries, through millennia of amphibian feet pressing into soft earth, clasping branches, the chance to step into the long slow sleep that remembers giant dragonflies, tree ferns and the shock  of those first steps onto dry sand

A pile of sticks might be enough. Dead leaves, logs or rocks, a heap and a half, holes and sheter and small tight squeeze points. Our amphibians are heading for hibernation places now. Try taking a look at your garden or the wild place at the end of the street: is there a corner that could be left? A haven for the sleepy? Undisturbed the winter through, a sanctuary to sleep for spring….



Before the winter comes at last, pause. The pond mirrors trees, reflects us, the toad’s eyes mirror other depths, a shimmer of gold, the dream of a damp world, an invitation to see the world at toad height or frog level.

Photographs
All c/o me apart from the final image c/o Kenny Taylor

Links
Froglife is an obvious link but you might also enjoy We Are The Ark with their advice on turning any space you can find into a sanctuary.....

Frogs rock in purple socks

A summer for frogs

A new Telling Toads poem

or maybe a song....

How has you summer gone? For our amphibian friends it has been a season of mixed fortunes with an early spring and sudden stretches of almost to hot days. We are still waiting for this summer’s numbers but you might like to know that last year, Froglife’s bold Toads on Roads patrols, helped 98,483 toads at 165 different crossing points.

Find out more by following the link. Be inspired! Be a toad-hero!

Or become a frog-friend. You might dig a pond. You might enocureage a bit of long grass, a pile of old wood, a cheerfully dmap corner ina garden or park. Or you might try following the following advice

The Frog Rap!

Have you sat in the shade?

In the leafy glade

Beside the pool

Where it’s nice and cool

And the frog rocks

In his purple socks

On his lily pad stage

Have you sat in the shade?       

                         

Cos I have!

I’ve sat in the shade

In a leafy glade

Beside the pool

Where it’s nice and cool

And I’ve rocked

With the frog

In his purple socks

But I wore yellow!

Jan Hedger

Thanks to Jan for this contribution to our Telling Toads collection and to Marilyn Dougan for the image. The Frog Rap really needs to be spoken out loud, so why not alarm the people next to you by cheerfully reciting this lovely little poem. I feel there should be a dance that goes with it..... Telling Toads sets out to gather new poems and stories celebrating amphibians and reptilesWhy not have a look at the notes about what we are looking for and unleash your inner frogliness across a page or screen…..find out more, here

Photos: c/o G MacLellan

 Watch out for the week at the start of October 

when Creeping Toad takes over the Froglife Twitter Feed for a week

Beneath the surface....issues among tadpoles

Beneath the surface

a tadpole's life is not always a happy one....

latest Telling Toads contributions

Life in a toad pond or a frog pool is not always easy. Even getting there after a winter of deep dreams in a cold rocky hollow is fraught with peril (and if you humans would ike to help, look for a local
Toad Crossing team, or check out Froglife’s “Toads  on Roads” page). As tadpoles grow, in a warm wet summer, a pond may be a good place to be but if there is too muhc sun and too little rain and the water begins to go…..Natterjacks in their rainwater hollows on heaths and dunes aim to grow fast and start hopping soon: their water is supply is precarious. Our amphibians don’t have those magnificent African Bullfrogs Dads who guard their squirming tadpole swarms (they have even been known to make lions back off, more, i suspect, from confusion than from fear) and who will dig channels from a drying puddle of ‘poles into the deeper, if more precarious, waters of a bigger pool. Our amphibians have to sit there and sing for the rain....

And all that is a longer introduction to the next two Telling Toads contributions…..its summer, I hope you get a chance to sit around somewhere enjoying the season…why not put pen to paper, pencil to note or finger to keypad and send us your own toady contribution….don’t know where to start? See the suggestions that are coming in on the Whispers pages. To read more of our Telling Toads pieces simply search this blog for Telling Toads!

Toads 
Susannah Violette
All sizes they bloat their night-bodies.
With their bulimic tongues, belch
their language of tadpole begetting,
of water seeking,
of climbing damp belly
to warty back
and thrusting
whilst asking:
Is this our puddle?
Am I home yet?

999 Tadpoles
Rosemary McLeish
I can't tell you how awful it is in this pond.
It's a heaving, seething, struggling, lumpy
milk pudding of a mud-hole.
I am surrounded by brothers. 
All they do all day is push and shove, making
more room for themselves. I sit tight
in my tiny space ignoring their jostling.
I keep myself small.

Somebody prods us with a stick.
Alarm stirs the pool into a whirling chaos of
brothers fighting to get out.
A lot of casualties.
At least the gruel thins.

Some of the brothers are growing legs.
They're eating the little ones.
But there still isn't room enough and now
they can kick, not just squirm.
They leave me alone, I don't know why,
so I can swim around a little, stretch.
Some great bird swoops down every day,
scoops up a beakful of us -
you can see them kicking as he glugs them down his throat.
He never comes near me.

Now we're all getting bigger, some are taking off,
jumping out of the pond, disappearing into the long grass.
The water in the pond is clearing,
brightening.
I can tell apart the ones with boring brown blotches now,
some long and thin,
some chubby, some tough and mean,
some cheery and silly.
Still fighting from time to time.
Some days I think it must be the weather.

I begged them to stop but they cold-shouldered me,
preferring fights to rational discourse.
I asked why they didn't like me,
but they looked at me as if I'd crawled out from under a stone.
Once in a while they suspend hostilities, all join
together to raise their voices in harmony to greet the dawn.
It gets on my nerves.
I tried to join them but they don't want to hear
my rusty burping voice, say I can't sing their tune.

They've all gone now. Left me behind.
I've got the whole pond to myself..
Nobody croaking, nobody quarrelling.
I can swim from one end to the other
and across from side to side.

At first it was just what I'd wanted.
The space to breathe,
so still and quiet I could think my own thoughts.
As much food as I could eat.
But gradually I began to miss them.
All that pushing and shoving, something happening
all the time.
Now it's just me and the pond and the weather,
it gets very boring. I'm lonely.
Wonder why they all left, why nobody ate me.
Wonder what's the matter with me.

The duckweed has been cleared,
so when the sun came out I saw myself reflected,
long and deep in the still water.
I looked over my shoulder,
nobody there but me.
No wonder they left me alone.
What a freak!
Yellow speckles, exopthalmic eyes, warty chin.
I should find a large broad leaf
to squat under.

I'm a toad, not a frog! 
But those are diamonds in my eyes.

Originally published in Artesian magazine in 2002, reprinted with poet’s permission

the perils of the deep

Thank you to today's poets, Susannah and Rosie and to Shaun Waters for the rising newt

Rock Star frog

a new poem for Telling Toads

The Rock Star

Ruthie Starling 

  

Dragon-toed,

rocking mildewed leathers,

he lumbers to the poolside

seeking refreshment.

This is his favourite shady dive.

Rana. Prince of the Pond.

He’s so cool,

has all the hip-hop moves

flexes clawed gauntlets

revs to leap from heron-shadow.

boomerangs to his stony bar-stool

hungry for a piece of the action.

A squint of liquid darkness

apertures his goggling gaze.

Flirt of lacy wings zooms into sharp focus.

Damselfly, beware.

In flash and snap

his tongue will flick you straight to Heaven.

With satisfied shrug

frog slides off into the blue.

Now he is in his element.

First published Fairacre Press in their Maligned Species series in 2016.

Telling Toads is a Creeping Toad initiative inviting people to submit poems, anecodtes and short stories celerbating our amphibians. More details here 

Photos by Jane Millum (first and last pics) and by Daniel Bran Griffin. More of Bran's work can be seen, here