Much milder this week and, today, sunshine and frogs. A *lot* of frogs! And a lot of frogspawn.

There are various small ponds all over the site that are starting to fill up with frogspawn – and today, the pond on the project site – which we only dug out four months ago – was absolutely heaving with frogs and frogspawn. At a conservative estimate, there were around 50 frogs enjoying themselves. Six or so clumps of spawn, and a constant low croaking chorus!

We aren’t sure if this pond will need digging out deeper next autumn – it’s only about 30cm at the deepest point and we want to see what happens to the water level throughout the year. We expect it will be mostly an ephemeral pond, which are fascinating and important habitats in themselves – but we’ll see. With the exception of the few flag iris roots and a couple of sprigs of water mint, at present there are no pond plants and a lot of green algae has bloomed. This obviously hasn’t bothered the frogs but – again – we’ll keep an eye on it and see if we need to do anything.

The willow catkins are almost ready to burst, and another delight this morning was a pair of long-tailed tits flitting from stem to stem.

Last year we planted some ragged robin and water avens plug plants, and broadcast a wetland native wildflower seed mix. We also have meadowsweet and purple loosestrife seeds ready to raise some more plugs. Hopefully these will gradually establish and (with selective weeding) we’ll be able to reduce the vigour/spread of the existing horsetail and creeping buttercup in favour of a better mix of species.