Day 3 - Cotton Grass and a new Tadpole Home

Day three was a busy one but I spent some time outdoors at Home, re-homed the school tadpoles and had a cup of tea in the garden.

My main wild time was an hour or so out on the moorlands around my childhood home as it's cotton grass season!

a male orange tip butterfly on cuckoo flower

yellow rattle

ragged robin

female scorpion fly

That's the only curlew photo I managed to take, despite being surrounded by them! As well as hearing curlews calling this afternoon, there were also loads of willow warblers and I heard my first cuckoo this year too.

female orange tip on red clover

wild red deer

I bought a plastic box today too in order to create a new habitat for the tadpoles. This is the tank they came home from school in...

It's been absolutely fine for the past two months whilst there was spawn and tadpoles but the cylindrical shape made it tricky for me to create a good flat area for froglets, and the most advanced tadpoles, who is far ahead of the others now has four legs and will soon need to climb out of the water.  Once he's lost his tail and become a proper little frog (and the children have seen him on Tuesday) I'll make sure the person who brought them in to school takes him back to the pond where he was laid. All of the tadpoles will return to their spawn pond once they become frogs.

I spent an hour this evening creating a new tadpole 'tank'...

There are more places to hide, plenty of space to sit out of the water and that grass is a tiny bit of turf, dug up so it will live and grow and give the froglets some moss and grass  to hide amongst.

There's not  much water in the box here, but once I had carried it indoors, I topped it up with more pond water so it's plenty deep enough for swimming. All 26 tadpoles are happily swimming around in it this evening.

After that, I had a cup of tea outdoors...

A look back...

On Day 3 last year I had a really busy day and just spent a little time in the garden...

In 2015, my day 3 activity was reading in the garden...