On of my jobs at the weekend was to clear up the leaves in the garden, it seemed the Cherry tree was the last to hold on to its leaves but decided they should all fall at once.

It is always a good idea to leave some leaves on the ground for earthworms, but as I was clearing some leaves in a flowerbed I had forgotten about one of the gardens residents that will spend all winter under damp leaves and that is our only remaining native frog, the common frog, there are Marsh frogs in the Romney Marsh area of Kent but these were introduced, and the Pool frog was once widespread in the East Anglian fens (known as the Fen Nightingale) but the population declined during the drainage of the fens, there was one remaining population in Norfolk but there has been no sign of breeding there since the 1990’s and there was hope to start breeding one remaining male from the Norfolk pond with females from Sweden in a hope to kick-start that population again.

So we can say there is only the Common frog now and increasingly there are more numbers found  in our gardens than in the wild.

Common frog in the garden

They will spend the winter under rotting logs, cavities under slabs or underground as well as the damp leaves before emerging in spring to breeding ponds.

We have a very small pond in our garden too small for fish but every year we look for the first signs of frogspawn.