Comments on: The worst frog mortality so far reported

By: heather

heather — Fri, 11 May 2012 02:55:27 +0000

Has anyone ever considered Acid rain or snow, melting in spring would destroy pond life… pollution in the air precipitating…? In canada it kills fish eggs in some areas… wondering if there is a connection…

By: Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 07:47:22 +0000

I don’t think toads will be very good at surviving for long underwater without oxygen – however, if ice is freezing and thawing I’d guess there might be enough oxygen around for a night, but that is a guess. Perhaps you could make a hole so they can get to the air (assuming they’re bright enough to find the hole)?

Jeremy

By: Anne S

Anne S — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 12:12:32 +0000

I’m a northern Scot, recently retired to the French Dordogne so the event of toads, and possibly frogs, spawning in January is a completely new experience – as are the large temperature variations. (20c last week, down to -10 last night)
On the subject of new experiences – the sight of hundreds of what appeared to be “corks” bobbing to the surface of the water took us by surprise last summer. The corks turned out to be newts on the day they changed to surface breathing, do you think they will return to where the were spawned this year?

On the topic of the thread all seems alive and well although we have had many weeks of ice cover on all the ponds. I did remove the snow at the edges where we could reach and broke the ice for the deer that come to drink.

By: Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 09:21:21 +0000

Hi Anne

Where are you writing from?

Jeremy

By: Anne S

Anne S — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:50:50 +0000

I found your blog through a search for frozen ponds and very informative it is, many thanks.
My query relates to spawning toads – following a week of very mild weather the toads have gone into the ponds to spawn but with the weather turning cold the water is freezing over during the night. We break up the ice first thing in the morning but have not seen any more spawning activity. Are the toads able to survive trapped under the ice once they have come out of hibernation stage?

By: jan

jan — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:54:14 +0000

have just fished out 5 dead frogs, last year we lost about 7.
We have a small pond which was completely frozen over for days in December.

I had tried to clear the snow off the surface and keep a ball floating on it, but clearly to no avail.

By: Liz

Liz — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 19:54:56 +0000

December 2010 / Jan 2011
We made a breath hole in our garden pond which is just over 2 feet deep.
We could see our our gold fish swimming around and thought everything would be fine. The following day, we discovered a frog trapped between the new layer of ice that had formed, and thought perhaps we made a mistake in doing that ?
As the big freeze began to thaw, we found 1 fish and 25 adult frogs and two juvenile frogs all dead in the pond, some were frozen in the ice with their heads popping out.
(all frogs were dead -white eyes and bloated)
We also have a smaller pond which is still frozen over & can see 3 adult frogs frozen in the ice…..any ideas what may have caused such a large death rate?

By: Alison

Alison — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:25:23 +0000

I topped up my pond using the hose pipe and two days later i noticed that there were alot of dead tadpoles in the pond. The volume of water added would probably be about ten percent of the whole of the pond. I feel gutted that my actions may have caused this to happen. Any ideas as to what has gone wrong please?

By: Barry Coleman

Barry Coleman — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:26:50 +0000

I have been finding an unusually high number of dead frogs in and around my pond. I live in Staffs.

Spawning activity was high this year and the pond has not frozen since. My fish (rudd) also seem to be OK.

This is a long established and natural pond about 20 years old and I’ve never noticed this before. There are often one or two dead ones in the autumn and winter but not in the spring.

My first thoughts were of some sort of contagious disease but it seems that many think it is the cold weather. I’m sure that they have survived this kind of weather before.

I a way I’m glad that it’s quite common this year and it’s not something that may have contaminated my pond, from the garden.

By: Jeremy Biggs

Jeremy Biggs — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:46:10 +0000

Hi Steve

It’s no comfort, but I think you’ve come up against the most important fact which becomes obvious as soon as you start thinking about water quality as the main pond management issue – where to get that water from if you can no longer rely on the tap.

But knowing that doesn’t help fill your pond!

The animals won’t mind low water levels for a while. If you can protect your plants somehow in the interim (water plants are pretty tough) there should still be plenty of time to refill with rainwater, unless we go in to an exceptionally dry spring.

The other thing to do is to find neighbours with water butts they are not using and scrounge their water!

I did this in Abingdon last year (twice) to refill the Blue Peter pond with clean water – and I had to take the water all the way to London!

One word of cation – if you do borrow other people’s water check that they haven’t filled their water butts with tapwater.

Jeremy