Frogs, fish and reptiles of the Brunswick Valley

By Rita

Approx September 06: When I still had a pond in the back yard (before I bowed down to the reality of the green drought we are having here - only enough rain to keep the grass green, according to local farmers - and filled the said pond in) we had a couple of weeks of terrific excitement as the green tree frogs thought to use the pond as a nursery.

Unfortunately several gold fish also lived in it. The morning after the excitement I managed to save a couple of the clutches of eggs, which in due time hatched. In buckets, in the house they lasted, and grew into tadpoles the size of the top of my little finger, 12 or 13 per bucket, with daily water changes towards the end.

The day after I put them into the pond, thinking them too big for the goldfish to scoff down, we had a stinking hot day. About half died. And at the end, I think, I got maybe 2 green tree froglets out of the exercise. Two that I saw.

One difference between green tree frog eggs and cane toad eggs is that cane toad eggs come as black dots set in a long ribbon of jelly. The frog eggs were in a raft of about sixty eggs. As you can see in the above photo 17 eggs have expanded in size and are almost ready to hatch.

March 06: During the early lot of big rain (beginning of the month) one of those little fawn coloured frogs common in the area before the drought appeared on the outside of a window.

Any other frogs making a comeback?

January 06: Early in the month two water (?) dragons moved into the rear of the backyard. The big one made short work of the eggs one of my hens was sitting on.

The lizard suns itself in the mandarin tree, I can see just its tail hanging down. The other one is more skittish.

After the rain, a snake in the rockery. I have only seen about fifteen centimetres of that so far, of a section near the tail. Tree or brown.

Tim Lowe, in his book The New Nature, said browns do well in the urban woodland we are nurturing. 

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