Life among the tapioca

It was a bad day when you arrived at the school dinner hall to find that pudding of the day was tapioca. "Eeeuuurrrgghh - frogspawn!"

However, it is a good day when you peer into your pond and find that it has filled with tapioca overnight.

And this week turned out to include some very good days indeed in my pond. My Chiffchaffs have yet to arrive, it is still about five weeks until the first Swallows return, but the appearance of twelve clumps of frogspawn were the latest uplifting sign that spring is on its way.

As the female Frog lays her eggs, her body coats each one in what is called mucin (now there's a word to use in your next game of Scrabble!), a mix of sugars and proteins. You can easily tell freshly laid spawn because the jelly capsules are still small.

Then, once in the pond, they absorb water and swell up over the course of a day or so. Not only does the mucin provide nutrients for the developing tadpole but it also insulates it from changes in temperature. Interestingly, frogspawn at higher altitude tends to swell more, offering more of a protective jelly coat.

What is so amazing about frogspawn is that it allows you to see life develop from its very conception. Housed within its transparent bubble, you can watch the black embryo turn, over the course of just a few weeks, from a dot into a comma and then a wriggling tadpole.

I'm hoping for yet more spawn as, on one of my nighttime forays this week, armed with my torch, I found 28 adult Frogs in a writhing, croaking frenzy. This is in a pond that is still only 15 months old. How sweet the rewards of giving nature a home.