eggs and tadpoles

of course it's on the venture challenge, but i don't really need much of an excuse to go look at cool stuff outside.

it turns out seeing things is a bit easier than taking good pictures of things.

and if the pond your frogs are laying in has a lot of salamanders in it, frog eggs will be in short supply, because salamanders will eat anything that's mouth-sized and frog eggs are delicious.

anyway, i managed to get a pic of some frog eggs (it think? because they don't match the eggs of species i KNOW, yet they are not clearly not frog eggs? which is to say that they appear to be frog eggs but they could be some other kind of thing like a salmander or a snail, but little critters are not really visible in there) and i was going to go back a few days later to take pics of their progress, but all the egg masses in the pond were gone.

so either it was a quick hatch or else, well, you know. frog eggs are delicious.

but wait! there's more!

because yesterday i was up on the preston pond trails and the beaver pond has a LOT of tadpoles in it right now. fat happy tadpoles who will soon be large enough to eat salamanders.

because a frog will eat anything that's mouth-sized, and salmanders are delicious.

they're skittish little critters, though. they do not want you to notice them, and that includes noticing them with a camera. my guess is that not being shy is sort of a bad evolutionary strategy if you are made out of delicious meat and have no defenses.

but i managed to get some video of one tadpole that has not yet fled my approach.