Daddy Long-Legs

This particular Daddy long-legs is a male toad that I disturbed while reducing weed growth in my garden pond,  I did my best not to disturb it to much and every time it popped its head up I took a few shots of this guy with his amazing bulging amber eyes and after a few encounters I even captured a few images as it croaked away presumably still looking for a late Mate !!

The toad finally abandoned its cover and climbed up onto floating weeds to provide me with a rather warty looking portrait and surface reflection that excluded those over sized Daddy long-legs

Mating Toads

I watched a fine Buzzard in the previous blog predating on frogs or toads this morning.  When I arrived home I decided to check out our large garden pond which already contained masses of frog spawn,  I could see a few toads floating on the surface with their heads and huge amber eyes reflecting on the water surface but I had expected to see more.

Then ripples spreading out from behind a recess formed by large granite rocks gave the game away with a dozen or more male toads writhing over each other in a very confined space,  I have to assume that there was a female toad caught up in there somewhere and would expect to start seeing the tell-tale string egg lines showing very shortly

Their mating seems to be a very public and social affair,  But I guess its each to their own !!