At last...

Busy night!

@chubsta - they were very skittish til the first spawn was laid - I think Gemma mentioned a couple of days ago that they get so much easier to approach once the first clumps appear (at least in my experience too) - even if they dive they soon pop up, perhaps the feel/smell of the spawn has some overpowering effect on them!

@Gemma - I'm really pleased with them - the pond was dug around six years ago and numbers built up til last year when we had a really quiet year and I was afraid the newts had done their predictable work on the tadpoles and therefore recruitment into the adult population; but this year, I have counted c350 frogs of which around 150 are females, by contrast with past years when males have outnumbered females 3 or 4 to 1.  This is in spite of the cold winter and the ice that formed during the 'beast from the east' week when there were over 100 in the pond and I feared the worst.  Resilient wonders!

Ah but I'd give plenty to have slowworms in my garden, Suz!  I think I'm going to have some very plump newts over the next few weeks...

It's just common or garden water mint, Mentha aquatica - the submerged form has rounder, lighter green leaves; by mid summer it will be rampant around the edges of the pond - it's what my southern hawker dragonflies use to emerge from the pond on.