I've disturbed what I originally thought was a baby Cane toad (for those not Australian, this is a introduced species which competes with our native frogs and is a pest) on many occassions when moving debris around in the garden lately. I've not been fast enough up till now to actually get a good look at it to be sure, but the other day I managed to corner one in a pot plant and although this isn't a great photo, it's enough to put my mind at ease that it's not a cane toad, but that leaves me with the question what is it I have in my garden and where did it come from?
I've seen other frogs in my garden, and it gives me a thrill each time I do. Mostly they've been either a largish green tree frog or little tiny green frogs (some with an almost silvery hue to them) not much bigger than a finger tip as you can see in the pictures below. (These three were sitting happily on the flowering branches of my fennel).
I'm keen to find out what this latest species is and whether it's friend or foe for both my garden and my other frog friends. Especially now...
Last year I convinced hubby to help me put in a small pond. A pond is an integral part of the permaculture garden and I was concerned that by not having one I was limiting the wildlife that would help to control my pests. I investigated lots of options for how to create a small pond. Space was limited and it needed to be situated near a large tree, with giant roots, so I opted to use a large container of sorts. The perfect thing presented itself via my mother networking on my behalf. I managed to get an old canoe mould, not quite what I'd imagined using, but at $50 and in the spirit of recycling it seemed a lot better than the preformed ponds I'd initially thought I'd need to use.
We half buried the canoe (that was as far as we could get it due to the big roots underneath) and put it on a slight downward angle at the far end so that any excess water would flow off into the garden areas below it. Next came the all important contents. I chose to try some edible water plants such as Taro and Water Chestnut and then because I'm a sucker for flowers, a water hyacinth with a pretty blue flower and a water lily. I also really wanted to encourage more frogs to the garden to help with natural insect control, so carefully chose frog friendly fish that would devour the mosquito larvae which are a huge problem here on the islands. The ones I chose love a good feed of mossie larvae but they are too small to be a problem to tadpoles. The downside of these is that they are temperature sensitive and died off during the winter last year, so needed to be replaced again this spring. To finish off I put some largish rocks in to create a dry space for emerging frogs or other wildlife that may fall in by accident and to give them a way out of the canoe.
So, a year or so on, I've had some failures, but also some very satisfying successes.
Well, it's been a long wait, but back to my dilemma, the other day I saw my first batch of frogs eggs. They were quite well concealed amongst the Vietnamese mint which has happily taken over one end of the pond. Then yesterday when I went to see how they were doing I couldn't find them, instead, there are hundreds of little tadpoles scooting around amongst the submerged leaves.
So do I now have an upcoming batch of good frogs or bad???
I've tried to google some frog images, but I couldn't find one that looked exactly like this one. If you know your frogs please let me know?
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