Frog Log

The first full springtime I spent in Hillingdon was in 1998. Towards the end of February, on a warm day, I was sitting eating breakfast in the kitchen/diner when I became aware of a strange sound. It was as if someone was cranking a wooden spindle in a wooden shaft: creak, creak, very rhythmic. Knowing it was many years since donkeys were harnessed to machinery and forced to walk round in circles all day, and knowing there was no village well or grain mill in the back garden, I decided it must be the grating call of some unusual bird.

I went to the window. Nothing. I opened the patio doors and the sound increased twenty-fold, accompanied by splashing sounds as many small bodies dived for cover beneath the surface of the pond. Frogs. Dozens of frogs. Twosomes, threesomes... I counted 42 in all, and the next day the surface of the pond was festooned with frogspawn. I enjoyed watching the tadpoles hatch into froglets, though I assume the fish ate a good deal of them.

The next year there were fewer pairs, and the following year even less. Last year, there were only two pairs and this year, sadly, none at all. Next door's voracious Bengal cats that chase and kill anything that moves were responsible for some deaths, but I fear ranavirus, or 'red leg', is probably to blame for the decline. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has noticed a similar local decline.

The end of May will see the stag beetle mating time. Once again, ten years ago the air was full of them, bumbling around, flying into the security light and into my hair. Once more, there has been a sharp decline from 50 or more beetles down to around 10 last year. I log my sightings and send them to organisations who are monitoring the UK stag beetle population which also appears to be in decline. Frogs, sparrows, thrushes, blue tits, stag beetles are all becoming rarer, yet parakeets and birds of prey are thriving. Nature's swings and roundabouts!