Christine's walking & birds blog

The frogspawn has changed again. I thought the long brown shapes were dead leaves or seeds, then noticed that one or two were twitching; these are tiny tadpoles.


Many of them will be eaten by the newts, which are stealthily going about their own business of breeding among the rocks and weeds, but always close to the frogspawn.

There might be common newts in the ditch, but the ones I saw today were almost certainly palmate newts. The webbed hind foot should be diagnostic of the male palmate in the breeding season, but it's not always easy to see; however the filament at the end of the tail is also diagnostic, and that's clearly present here.


The palmate hind foot is more marked in the picture below; that would make these two both male, so I'm not sure what's going on here.


As I walked back to the car a golden eagle came flying over the hill on a steady course to the east.


I mentioned before that the golden is more wary than the white-tailed, and tends to veer away from an observer on the ground; but this one wasn't and didn't. I obviously talk a load of rubbish.

Other things noted: while watching a pair of black-throated divers on a road-side loch, I noticed a toad crossing at its leisure. The road wasn't very busy today and it made it to the other side. On a second road-side loch there was a single black-throat, a bunch of goldeneye, a pair of mallards, a pair of oystercatchers, a pair of little grebes in a small patch of reeds, and a greenshank. It was the warmest day so far, and I didn't wear a hat; but now I have a sore throat. "Ne'er cast a clout till May be out" indeed.