Thursday 21 June 2012

not just any old tadpoles

A healthy walk was the order of the day on Monday - such a beautiful day it was that we just had to get out of the classroom and into it!  Not just any old walk of course - we had life cycles to check up on.

First stop the pond - surely those tadpoles would have sprouted legs by now …

Something had certainly sprouted legs, and even as I approached the pond to look for myself, my ears were assailed by the squawks and squeaks of 6 year-old excitability.  “Legs, legs!” the cry.

But look closely …

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and the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that these (yes) leg-sporting tadpoles are rather different in shape (being much longer and narrower) from frog tadpoles.  Seems many of the tadpoles in the pond were salamander (or possibly newt; the jury is out on that one) tadpoles.  Which, thinking about it…..

sally the newt

isn’t all that surprising.

Our froggy tadpoles are still very much that though, although I do feel we have just about confirmed the universal presence of (albeit still rather tiny) back ones.  Who knew they took so LONG about it??

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But there was more for us to be squeaky about.  Dragonflies (now there’s an interesting life cycle to find out about when you have a moment!) and damsel flies…..

damsel

also flitted about enticingly - but a bit too quickly for me (hence this photo of one from my files!) or anyone else (and believe me we tried!) to catch.  Bees too…..

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(“A bee!  A bee!”) were doing their insectly duty, visiting the newly-opened water lilies.

Water lilies eh.  Plants that positively thrive on being waterlogged (something that not all plants do of course - and of which, more later).

But for now, we have to drag ourselves away - we have seeds to check up on.

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