Frogs!

We got a phone call yesterday from Crafty Green Boyfriend's Mom to say that the frogs were starting to get active in her garden ponds. So we went round today to have a look - the first thing we noticed was this lovely clump of frogspawn in the small pond

 There were lots of frogs in the big pond, though they took a while before they started showing their faces. We sat by the pond and waited, listening to the birds singing. This frog seemed fearless.

More and more of them appeared

some of them mating

Meanwhile up in the tree, a pair of magpies (one of them on the right in the photo below) and a crow (on the left in the photo) were harvesting twigs for their nests

Pele the neighbour's cat came along to join in the activity

He's just a year old and very playful, here he's found a feather

and here he's leaping for a stick

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I'm delighted also that one of my poems is now included in the Frogs Book, part of the Maligned Species project managed by Fair Acre Press.

Another of my frog poems has just been highly commended in the Barn Owl Trust poetry competition and is included in their 'Wildlife Words' anthology.