Pacific Northwest Gardening: Who are your garden helpers?, 1 by Rarejem

Rarejem wrote:
Beahive, I commented on your cutie on the hellebore thread, but will tell you again that I just love her! My spring has been way too quiet as well..that's why I have been so thrilled over the last couple of days to hear the full chorus at last. They kind of started singing a couple of weeks ago, and then it went right back to silence when the weather got cold again. We have a lot of underground springs here as well (I think it was you who posted that you did??) and so have a tremendous amount of surface water this time of the year, so the frogs love it. The down side is that when we have a hot spring, I spend hours finding all of the little warm puddles that are almost dried up and rescuing the tiny tadpoles before they get cooked. Funny thing...I can squish a slug in a heartbeat but will get tears in my eyes when I find a low spot full of taddies that I was too late to save! If you ever find your way to this neck of the woods in mid May, I would be more than happy to share as many tadpoles as you want! It almost looks like you could walk across them in my big pond when it has been a good year!

We spent a lot of time a few years ago trying to find out what the majority of our frogs and toads in the yard were, and determined that we most likely have the red legged frog as the majority of the population. Tadpoles are almost as big as those of bullfrogs, but when they morph, they don't get any bigger.

There are two in this pic pretending that they aren't there!