It’s all happening in our ponds. Frogs are gathering, crossing the fields and coming through the woods, all heading to the pond.

We, like this one, are attracted to the area by the strange sound — the singing of the males as they bob about in the water of the pond. The surface, when we arrive, seems to be boiling.

Swirling with aquatic activity; those are not bubbles you see, but great mounds of frogspawn. Couples, already paired are busy laying their eggs, the males piggy-back, holding on for dear life to be sure to fertilize their chosen females eggs as she lays. Single males are calling and squabbling, scrambling to catch a gravid female.

Exhausting! And at the edge of the pond we find a, body — a casualty of all this effort and others resting, presumably until dusk when they will leave the pond and start their dangerous journey back to the soggy hideaways that are their homes.

Still it goes on, below, these may be waiting to leave but I suspect the two on the left are awaiting late arriving females — there is an aura of expectation in their body language.

Fortunately this pond has no fish in it so the breeding success is probably quite high, and getting better every year by the look of it. Although many of the tadpoles will succumb to predation by newts and dragonfly larvae that also thrive here.