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2017... and so it begins

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Suzi View Drop Down
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    Posted: 12 Jun 2017 at 6:56pm
It's that time of year when we find palmates in the overgrown parts of the garden. 


Suz
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GemmaJF View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Apr 2017 at 11:24am
Oh no! This is not good at all. The way you describe them disintegrating is just what happened to ours. There were one or two obviously dead and floating, but the majority just seem to disintegrate. There were signs of an ink black residue around the edge of the pond, I can only assume it was what was left of them.

I did spot one in the pond today, so some are still alive, but just the same, it went from thousands one day, to practically none left at all.

I am pretty convinced we can put ours down to the field being sprayed. It seems even more worrying that the rain could bring down enough toxins from the air to kill tadpoles. Cry
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chubsta Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Apr 2017 at 10:57am
Gemma - it looms like my poor tadpoles may have now suffered a similar fate..

On Friday night we had the first rain for at least 3 weeks, not much, but enough to make the ground wet so its a start. The next day I saw loads of dead tadpoles on the surface of the pond, they were basically disintegrating. There were still plenty swimming healthily though. I decided to put the fountains on to aerate the water a little and the surface almost immediately went foamy, it was like detergent had been poured in! 

I have just checked now and whereas before this weekend the pond was absolutely heaving with tadpoles now i am seeing just the odd one, thousands must have been killed. 

I guess there must have been something in the air that was brought down with the rain and into the pond, I can't think of any other explanation. I live in the middle of a village so overspray from fields is very unlikely, but the village is on the cliffs overlooking the channel and it is close enough to smell France (there are a lot of occasions where pollution from the French side of the channel has caused problems around here, and the smell of whatever they are doing can be horrendous) so it could well be something brought over at a higher altitude that the rain just happened to bring down.

I am absolutely gutted, after putting the spawn into trays as suggested and having great success i was really looking forward to a bumper crop of froglets this year, hopefully a few will survive whatever has happened...
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Apr 2017 at 5:40pm
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. It is Mervyn I feel for really, in his 70's now and a big highlight of his day is counting what he sees in the pond. There are a few taddies left, not many though.

I'll pump out the pond in the Autumn, do a water change and next year raise some of the tadpoles for longer. I was going to this year then thought they would be fine in the pond.  Disapprove

It just goes to confirm what I had suspected for years, intensive arable agriculture has wiped out common frogs from much of the wider countryside in East Anglia. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tom Omlette Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2017 at 10:08pm
sorry you lost your taddies gemma :(

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chubsta Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2017 at 9:02pm
Originally posted by GemmaJF GemmaJF wrote:

The chemical companies do the testing. Enough said regarding toxicity of their products! Very often they get sprayed at much higher concentrations than recommended or is legal also. 

I do not tend to get involved locally, a hundred things I could drop our neighbouring farmer in deep water for, but they are neighbours at the end of the day and we have to live here and get on with them.

I have high hopes that when our hawthorn hedge is mature enough it will stop a lot of the over spray, but it will be a couple of years before it has grown enough. I had to replace the old hedge because the farmer ripped it to pieces when turning a plough in the field, they caught some old fencing buried inside it and made a terrible mess of it.

Fair enough, it just gets to me that farmers and housing developers seem to be able to do what they want with the countryside.

Hopefully enough tadpoles have survived that some will reach adulthood.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Suzi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2017 at 9:00pm
Gemma, I am sorry to hear of the tadpole disaster. Hopefully some will make it.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2017 at 6:49pm
The chemical companies do the testing. Enough said regarding toxicity of their products! Very often they get sprayed at much higher concentrations than recommended or is legal also. 

I do not tend to get involved locally, a hundred things I could drop our neighbouring farmer in deep water for, but they are neighbours at the end of the day and we have to live here and get on with them.

I have high hopes that when our hawthorn hedge is mature enough it will stop a lot of the over spray, but it will be a couple of years before it has grown enough. I had to replace the old hedge because the farmer ripped it to pieces when turning a plough in the field, they caught some old fencing buried inside it and made a terrible mess of it.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote chubsta Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2017 at 6:15pm
the fact that the tadpoles have died and you feel unwell would warrant further investigation i think, surely farmers aren't allowed to contaminate the environment to that extent? A quick phone call to the Environment Agency might be worthwhile, it wouldn't be the first time farmers have used illegal chemicals on their fields...
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GemmaJF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2017 at 3:31pm
Sad to report we have had a tadpole disaster, we think it was chemical spray form the neighbouring field. 

The day before it was sprayed, I was watching thousands of tadpoles feeding at the edge of the pond. The day after spraying, the tadpoles seemed lethargic, then over a couple of days they started to disappear. Just a handful left alive in the pond.

Wind was in our direction and I got a soar throat from the spray. Does make me sad that it is not just the arable fields that are wastelands, the action of intensive farming can affect nearby gardens too.




Edited by GemmaJF - 09 Apr 2017 at 3:32pm
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