52 Weeks Wild #22

I did consider that 30 Days Wild and my daily blog posts might complicate my 52 Weeks Wild idea when I started it back in January and have considered dropping these posts and resuming them after June but I've decided it won't take much to do a quick weekly round up for the sake of completeness so here goes - wild moments from the past week...

Irises flowered on the drive this week, this colour and yellow ones too, all self seeded!

I've been off work for half term but haven't had a lot of free time as life is very busy at the moment. As I mentioned in last week's post, I brought some tadpoles home from school to look after them over half term so have spent a fair bit of time just watching them! They are really enjoying eating boiled spinach.  I managed to get a reasonable close up photo of 'stripe' - one of two tadpoles I suspect are leucistic. I've not done any research yet but I see no reason why there can't be leucistic tadpoles/frogs and as these two look so different to the others (they're pale, transparent and have a V shaped stripe on their heads) that seems the obvious explanation to me. I'm looking forward to see how they look as they change into frogs.

I spent a day at Carsington Water, volunteering at Wild Wednesday with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. It was busy, I didn't have time to take photos but as we were packing up, I did wander down to the pond for a quick look.  We couldn't do pond dipping today as the water level is so low in the pond at the moment that children wouldn't reach the water and the creatures, I'm sure, would prefer to remain undisturbed anyway. I went to have a look in the pond though towards the end of the day and saw a couple of newts, a lot of tadpoles and some damselflies.
 

The first day of June meant the start of 30 Days Wild...

I had an evening pond dipping in the garden...

Met up with family for a walk in the rain at Ness Gardens...

Enjoyed the cotton grass on the moors above Home...

Between Friday morning and Saturday morning Mr Long Legs became Mr Four Legs and took on a more froggy body shape!  He's the most advanced of the  tadpoles and I think I'll have to ask the person who brought the frog spawn in to school to take this one back to his native pond on Tuesday, once the children have seen him.

I added some extra branches to the tank in the morning so he has somewhere to climb out, but wasn't happy with the shape of the tank for creating a better froglet home. After my wander amongst the cotton grass, I bought a plastic box for a few pounds and then spent an hour or so creating a more suitable habitat that will see these tadpoles through until they are released back to the pond they came from as little frogs...

I had lots to do today (I still have lots to do this evening in fact!) so my 30 Days Wild activity today was just a quick one - my outdoor drink (in the garden) and looking a the roses which have flowered in the last couple of days.

 I'll end with a photo of the froglet...

He's rapidly losing his tail now and spending most of his time out of the water. He needs to go back to the pond he came from very soon!