Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 83

FROGS ARE MATING in ponds. The males attract the females by raucous croaking. When they mate, the male climbs onto the female’s back, and clasps her with his forelegs. They stay there for a while as if they were glued together. She deposits the fertilised frogspawn in the water while he is still holding her, and he only lets her go when she has finished laying. After that the frogspawn is left to itself, and floats about in jellied masses. One female may lay as many as three thousand eggs. The little black specks in the jelly start turning into tadpoles after two or three weeks, after which it takes another three months for the tadpoles to develop into baby frogs.

Toads have drier, more warty skins than frogs, and live a more solitary life, often far away from ponds. One of them may live for years in a cellar or under an old water butt. At this time of year, when they are going back to water to breed, many of them are run over on the roads. Their spawn is quite different from the frogs’, consisting of long strings of jelly with double rows of black eggs, wound round reeds and water weeds.