Last year my pond was full of frogs, with at least four spawning females, followed by hundreds of tadpoles. It was the first time: normally there had been one large resident frog, apparently determined to live a solitary Jeremy Fisher existence.

Two weeks ago, the Gunnersbury Triangle pond contained over 12 exceptionally large, plump frogs, clearly in breeding condition. The light was a bit tricky for photography, but if you peer through the surface of the water you’ll see a pair of frogs near the top, with one of many spawning females that day.

It’s hard to be sure from the mass of frogspawn, but I’d say there were more than six loads of eggs: the females seem to have preferred to spawn close to each other in one small area of the quite sizable pond. Perhaps there is safety in numbers. Certainly when there are several ponds close to each other, as there are in our block of gardens, all the spawn goes in one pond. I heard that a heron has been seen at the Triangle pond at dawn every morning lately, and the frogs are definitely hard to see now, so the predator has probably eaten several of them. So perhaps there is not so much safety in numbers, as extreme danger in being alone: at least in the crowd, you are just one target among many.

This morning I saw one moderately large frog in my pond. I couldn’t be sure, but I think he had a raincoat, fishing rod and galoshes with him. It looks like a solitary year down at the pond.