First frogspawn seen in pond this morning. Several dollops in the usual place. Lots of splashing and croaking.

First sign of frogs in the pond today. Lots of splashing and croaking. No sign of spawn.

First dollop of the year seen this morning. Very mild. The pond has only been lightly frozen on one morning so far this year, but there’s plenty of time for cold weather. Some frog activity during the day.

More spawn next day, including one clump with white blobs on the surface of each egg – the outside, not the nucleus inside. By midday these looked normal.

Last year I had so much water soldier I was giving it away and putting armfuls on the compost heap. This year it had all disappeared. I saw a few remains covered in great pond snails, and again suspected their delinquent behaviour. See here and here.

I put a plant kindly donated (returned) by Annie in the pond yesterday, and today shook these snails off it. There were no snails on the plant when I put it in the pond. I’m afraid they went on the compost heap.

Next day

Not as many as yesterday, but still a substantial number. And at least ⅓ of the plant has been eaten.

More frogspawn than in previous years. I culled about 40 of the biggest great pond snails. There are still plenty. I’ll try to keep moving them away from the spawn.

First tablespoonful seen this morning. More at midday. Lovely sunny afternoon. Quite a lot of frog activity.

One water soldier flower, like last year, but none the less welcome for that.

I really must clear out some bogbean and greater spearwort. You’re supposed to have 30% clear water.

There’s rather too much greater spearwort so I ought to get some out. It would be nice to let it flower, but I can’t remember when that is. I presume the white arum-like flower is the lysichiton, but everything gets so jumbled up it’s hard to tell.

Lymnaea stagnalis. Handsome creatures, but heavily implicated in the recent total disappearance of the frogspawn. Reluctantly, I culled 20. There are still plenty left.

See Austrian enthusiast’s article and Wikipedia article

I also spotted some eggs, which are very characteristic and seen in an image in the Wikipedia article.