The Eggs of Spring

The frogs have been busy as is clear by this picture of a huge batch of frog eggs. It shouldn't be too long before we have a bunch of tadpoles. Of course the question is how many of the eggs survive the hungry gold fish. These eggs may be lucky because they are in the shallow waterfall pool so they won't encounter the gold fish until they get washed down into the large pond.
The other picture is bird eggs in the nest on top of the porch column. This is a major test for my snake deterrent I installed to protect the bird eggs and baby birds from the black snake that can climb up the column for lunch. We'll keep a close eye out and see if it works.

Yes, The Goldfish are Still Here

It seems like it's been a long time since I posted goldfish pictures so here are a couple of good ones. The first has a neat added feature: if you look closely in the bottom right hand corner of the first picture, there is a frog sitting on the bottom of the pond - two feet down. The first picture also gives a good view of several goldfish with heavy black coloring on their back.
The second picture has a more reddish tint to the goldfish than the first one.

Beautiful Daffodils

A couple of weeks ago, the Daffodils started popping up. Even though some of the nights were below freezing, these flowers continued to persevere. Their display is even more striking because they are the only color in the area this time of year. One other great benefit is the deer don't like them so you can plant them anywhere. Our best bed of Daffodils is behind the shed which gets great sunshine.

Two Pair or Three of a Kind

In poker, three of a kind beats two pair. I don't know what wins when it happens to be frogs but here they are. A bunch of action in the small pond yesterday resulted in these two pictures just seconds apart. The first shows two couples laying eggs on top of the filter screen.
The second picture shows the beginnings of a frog ball with two males ganging up on one female. Every year we get several frog balls and once it resulted in the death of the female. Nature can be pretty rough sometimes even in our peaceful pondscape. I did see one frog in the new frog pond this morning so maybe there is hope for more to come.

The Frogs Are Back

Big surprise night before last. Just after dark, my wife went out to play with the dog and she yelled "the frogs are back". I checked the pond area and there must have been more than 2 dozen frogs hopping around. Upon a closer look, there were a bunch more swimming in the ponds. In this first picture there are a couple frogs testing their breast stroke after months in hibernation.
In the second picture a pair of frogs are involved in one of the reasons for this spring awakening, producing more frogs. A great chorus of frog singing all night long always accompanies the frogs when they party. One interesting note, I only saw one frog in the new frog pond - maybe it is too new for the frogs or they don't like it. Only time will tell. According to my blog from past years, this years frogs are a week or so earlier.

Algae Blossoms Can Be Beautiful

Every year as winter starts to move into spring, the algae comes back. This year is no exception. As you can see in the first picture, the algae is coating the waterfall steps. This appears to be a thick coating of string algae. It looks really nasty and everything that falls on it sticks so the leaves get mixed in with the algae.
The second picture is much more interesting and beautiful in its own way. In fact this picture is now starring as wallpaper on one of my computers. This is the algae collection on top of the filter. I think this mass of algae must be fermenting which could account for all the bubbles on the surface. The bubbles don't seem to pop but do grow bigger. After the photo, I cleaned out the algae so we'll see how long it takes to come back.