posted: Apr 22, 2009

Happy Earth Day!  We here at Thorn Creek try to make every day Earth Day and that includes paying attention to the fauna as well as the flora that surrounds us.  On a recent walk up to the pond that is located about 50 yards behind the seed increase plot we found a large mass of frog eggs.  A local amphibian aficionado told me that these are the eggs of the Columbia Spotted Frog.
Apparently these native frog eggs will hatch in 10-21 days so we are excited to keep an eye on them and hope to catch a glimpse of the tadpoles emerging. Of the 150-500 eggs laid per egg mass, only a few will survive as the tadpoles and eggs are a tasty snack for other animals like birds and snakes. 



A couple of days later I walked up to the pond, without my camera unfortunately, and caught a glimpse of 5 or 6 frogs and fear that I interrupted more egg laying.  They were wary of me but after a few minutes of being still they began to move around again and seemed to communicate through a series of low knocking sounds.  Very interesting!
We seem to have a healthy population of Columbia Spotted Frogs right now which makes us happy and we look forward to checking on them during our lunch breaks.