Migration Is In The Genes

I am something of a herpetologist .....

Building A Pond

 ... I specifically put a small ground level pond into my garden at the wettest point, to aid local frogs. I stock it with oxygenating plants, keep it from choking up, stocked it with water snails, and top it up from a rain water barrel purchased specifically for this role.

This after I noticed a neglected garden pond in an uncaring neighbours front yard, which was choked and drying out (and I knew that they wouldn't fill it with water, or clear the weeds that were overtaking it). Yet some desperate frogs had laid some doomed frog-spawn in it in want of anywhere else in this age of plastic grass, decking and tarmac drives. 

I was moved by their need to procreate and sustain their species, but that humans were eradicating them .... so much for our eco-aware society .... uncaring, and cold towards the needs of other species is all I have ever seen from 95 per cent of the human race. Yeah, save the planet, but not in my backyard!

The Bay Horse Totnes - Frog Mating Spot

 So I was struck by a small tale that was reported about a pub in Totnes, Devon, England, where every spring frogs congregate in large numbers every spring. The landlord of The Bay Horse public house, Rob Alexander, reported that every February, the frogs congregate on the garden steps .... they only leave after a week or so. He added that "I'm not entirely sure where."

He said that he suspected that the pub lay on an ancient migration route that generations of frogs have followed for thousands of years on their way to mating ponds. However, its just as likely that the pub, which is a Grade II listed 15th-century, ex-coaching inn, was built on what was a mating pond, and that they continue to travel there, before presumably finding some other spawning pond, because they are genetically programmed to head to that long lost pond, because their first ancestors that had headed to the original pond before finding it now built over, had followed this same route. 

Totnes in South Devon is said to have many springs beneath it and was once the home to many waterways, now all built over. A fact confirmed by Mr Alexander, "we’ve had various springs bubbling up in the back room over the years if it's a really wet year. So we know we’ve got a water body under the pub, spring water. It's all still there. If you dug a well in any property on Totnes you’d find spring water underneath it."

Frog Warning Sign

However, Mr Alexander showed a compassionate nature as he puts up signs when they arrive to stop people stepping on them or allowing dogs to bite them. He and his wife Kathy, even ".. tried to get a pond at one point, but they don't seem that desperate for a pond" .... they just get jiggy with it there because they still congregate there, before spawning elsewhere.