Nothing new for my tally today, but the watermeadow is awash with baby frogs or toads. They are mostly scrambling through the grass, but some have tried to leap.
And we still have tadpoles…
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The Watermeadow in July
We went for a walk round the watermeadow and pushed our way through the overhanging grass down the paths. We saw baby frogs, but they hopped out of the way before I could focus the camera on them. We saw a Drinker Moth caterpillar again. It was huge, around 6cm and quite chubby. We also saw a dead animal, very dead, very smelly. I thought it was a rat, but it had a short furry tail, so I’m wondering whether it was a water vole, as even though it was flat, it still looked too large, wet, and dark to be a field vole. It would be very exciting if we had live water voles in the stream – I’ve never seen them in our garden before. Signs to look for are a) a burrow with nibbled grass ‘driveway’ b) a pile of grass stems nibbled at a 45° angle, like a quill, as they tend to eat in a regular place, and c) tiny oval droppings.
Again, compared to last month the watermeadow looks ravaged and untidy. The grass is longer and brushed with its pink-ish blooms.