FROG BLOG

It was pretty noisy around the pond yesterday morning.

Along with the various bird calls, our neighbour was mowing and the sky seemed more than usually busy with planes overhead. It was also quite windy. Still, it was a good opportunity to try out the waterproof case on my phone again. My first attempts on a cloudy day were disappointing and certainly not worth uploading. This time, despite the noise, I tried again, hopeful that the sun on the pond would make a difference. It did.

The video is blurry at times. This is mostly because the camera is unsure what to focus on, especially when the tadpoles move in close to investigate. And the image shakes a bit, mainly because I’m dangling the camera half in the water, balancing while leaning over the pond, but also because the tadpoles are pushing the camera.

The underwater scenes look quite surreal and you get a great view of the sunlit forest beneath the pond weed. The shape of the tadpoles is much clearer too, when they occasionally come into focus. But the surprise is the sound of their teeth scraping algae from the rocks. I had imagined that the underwater scene would be silent and serene, with the above-water sounds distant and muffled. Not so… and slightly unsettling perhaps. So listen out for the teeth. There is some rustling and rubbing as the camera settles on the rocks, but the rhythmic scraping is unmistakable.