AMPHIBIANS
Common Frog
Common frogs metamorphose through three distinct developmental life stages — aquatic larva, terrestrial juvenile, and adult.
Identiyfing Common Frog & Habitat
They have corpulent bodies with a rounded snout, webbed feet and long hind legs adapted for swimming in water and hopping on land. Common frogs are often confused with the common toad, but frogs can easily be distinguished as they have longer legs, hop, and have a moist skin, whereas toads crawl and have a dry 'warty' skin.
Common frogs typically hibernate from late October to January, they will re-emerge as early as February if conditions are favourable. Common frogs hibernate in running waters, muddy burrows, or in layers of decaying leaves and mud at the bottom of ponds or lakes primarily with a current. The oxygen uptake through the skin suffices to sustain the needs of the cold and motionless frogs during hibernation.
Prey & Predators
Newly hatched tadpoles are mainly herbivorous, feeding on algae, detritus, plants and some small invertebrates, but they become fully carnivorous once their back legs develop, feeding on small water animals or even other tadpoles when food is scarce. Preferred foods include insects (especially flies),snails, slugs and worms.
Tadpoles are eaten by fish, beetles, dragonfly larvae and birds. Adult frogs have many predators including storks, birds of prey, crows, gulls, ducks, terns, herons, pine martens, stoats, weasels, polecats, badgers, otters and snakes. Some frogs are killed, but rarely eaten, by domestic cats, and large numbers are killed on the roads by motor vehicles
Common frogs breed in shallow, still, fresh water such as ponds, with spawning commencing between March and June, but generally April. The males congregate in the ponds, where they compete for females.
The females lay between 1,000 and 2,000 eggs which float in large clusters near the surface of the water. Within three or four days all the females will have laid their eggs and left the water and the males disperse.
Reproduction
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