JON'S JOURNAL: We shall pick up an existence by its frogs

As regular readers of my rambling will know, I have been following the progress of the poor unfortunate froggies of two areas just outside the village - Kennerland and Huddisford. Lots of them jollily tripped out to procreate at the end of January, and all the resultant spawn was killed in the bitterly cold snap a few weeks ago and is now rotting away.

The resultant yucky mess (to use the official scientific terminology) is now rotting away and in some cases appears to acually be fouling the water of the little ponds and ditches where it was deposited by Mr and Mrs Frog the other week.

Now Mr and Mrs Frog seem to have got in the romantic mood again (or at least one couple have - perhaps because it was Valentine's Day last week), because there is one lone batch of frogspawn in the Huddisford ditch. Ironically (if this is the word) it has been laid next to a piece of decaying dead spawn.

It seems to be developing normally, which is good news. However, could the decline in the frog population be due to the fact that so many of them pursue their biological urges too early in the year for the spawn to hatch?

Isn't it a pity that it seems to be illegal now to collect spawn from the wild; because it might be a boost to the population as a whole if someone collected some of the January spawn (which is doomed anyway), raised it in captivity and released the resulting tadpoles when the cold weather is over?

What a pity there aren't any anarchist zoologists about who have a healthy disregard for the law and want to do something good for the environment. Hmmmm

Oh, BTW I was wondering the other day: if I was to post a picture of a pair of Rana temporaria whilst in amplexus would that count as "Frog's porn"?