Our Babies Are Growing... Legs!!

Life in the pond is going well. When we first met our little western toads (Bufo boreas), they were just mere masses of egg strings.

Then the hatching...

And now - metamorphosis!!!!

All of the eggs appeared to have been laid within a single 24 hour period, however, we've noticed that the tadpoles appear to mature at very different rates. Must be some evolutionary adaptation thing...


Here's one of our little critters, complete with back legs. (The focus is a little blurry because the camera seems to insist on focusing on the water surface... argh!)


The next step... front legs and development of air-breathing lungs! Here's a freshly-metamorphed toady, ready to face the big, big world. Pretty cute, huh? We've got these little hoppers all over our pond area now. Its so much fun to watch them roam the mud flats, eating insects I can barely even see.


I guess it might be appropriate to also show you a picture of our little pond. Vegetation from left to right: The light green shrub is coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis). We like this shrub a lot because it blooms in the fall, and so helps to provide year-round nectar for our local insects. Its a huge favorite of the butterflies, and we get an especially large number of Painted Ladies (Vanessa cardui). The low green veg in the middle is Torrey rush (Juncus torreyi). The tall green veg is cattail (Typha latifolia). The cattail just appeared once the pond area became regularly innundated (all other plants were brought in as seeds or in containers). The large skeleton in front of the cattails are good 'ol sunflowers (Helianthus annua). The sunflowers started as seeds we would spread, but now they re-seed themselves each year. We enjoy the sunflowers because the birds appreciate them so much. We've had flocks of goldfinches (Carduelis tristis) come through and feed off of them in the fall. In the back, behind the bridge (the shiney white thingey) is deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens). It started as just a couple bunches, but the stuff has become a monster and is sprouting up all over our stream bed. Its all we can do to dig them up and replant them in more-desired locations.
And finally... I'll leave you with a second toad video, "Tadpoles in a Pond, II". You may notice that there is a tadpole in there with back legs. Very exciting stuff!!

Tadpoles In A Pond

Finally!!! Its here!!!

Yes, the highly anticipated release of my movie, "Tadpoles In A Pond", is now available for viewing on YouTube. Well... the clamor isn't quite so big as Spiderman 3, but my cousin, M, did send me an email in which she mentioned that she was looking forward to seeing my tadpole movie. And, relatively speaking, that qualifies as high anticipation to me!

First, a history of our tadpoles:
It all began innocently enough back in April of 2006. The hubby was digging in our yard (an everyday occurence for us... nothing special there). He as hoping to create a pond along our "stream" - which is essentially a ditch dug through our property that we flood with water from a hose. He accidentally left the hose running through the night, which filled the hole with water. No problem, except that a couple of opportunistic western toads (Bufo boreas) decided to breed. We awoke the next morning with strings of toad eggs scattered throughout the pond.

Here's a photo the string of eggs from this year's toads. There are so many eggs laid by a single pair, they extend throughout our little 10 x 4 ft pond. What a producer that female was!

** Important hint => if you place the cursor over the photo and left-click, you can see a larger version of the picture. This is the case for all the photos in my blog. Sorry, forgot to mention that earlier...

Well, after we found the eggs in the flooded hole last year, as concerned animal lovers, we HAD to keep watering the area and keep the little guys and gals alive. It was an interesting science experiment, and we got a lot of enjoyment out of it (in addition to more toads in our yard, a bunch of dragonfly larvae - many of whom ate most of our tadpoles - and even some mayfly larve. Exciting times!).

By the way... yes, we do live in the desert, but the toads were already there. The hubby had a tiny pond in the yard (3x2 ft black plastic tub type) for about 10+ years and the toads had already appeared for that. We've got cottonwood trees for shade and through the years have planted assorted rushes and reeds. The cattails showed up on their own. All in all, the toads have got a pretty sweet deal in our yard.

After the toads, mayflies and dragonflies all metamorphosed into their terrestrial adult forms, the pond was drained and further excavation (deepening, widening, and lengthening) was conducted over the winter time. This spring, we were ready for toad action. And act they did!!!


Can you see all the egg strings in that second photo?

Two weeks later... we had tadpoles!!!! And therefor, "Tadpoles In A Pond". Now, I admit, the video is oh-so amateur. I moved the camera too quickly. The resolution drops when uploaded onto YouTube; they just look like a bunch of blobs with tails. But, hey, that's sort of what they look like in real life anyway.

So... with no further adoo, I present to you my movie for your immense enjoyment, "Tadpoles in our Pond":


I recommend you browse YouTube further (edited in later: only web virgins haven't surfed YouTube these days! So if you haven't, start with these:) I recommend it, because there are so many other wonderful videos to see, such as Nora, the piano playing cat, or clips of Bill Maher's New Rules (however, I would only recommend the latter for those of you who are left-leaning and not easily offended. If either of these are the case, just stick to watching Nora the cat. Or maybe you can watch a cool real-life version of the Simpson's TV show intro. I like that one, too).

Enjoy!