Hi folks, I relined an old stone above ground pond a while back, and have had various frogs come and go so far, and now I have lots of tadpoles of varying sizes. I live in a cool climate with a creek nearby, all the frogs I see around here are small native ones, as in no bullfrogs, tree frogs etc., but there is a lot of variety when I look closely. I remember the tadpole process from when I was a kid, the round tadpole gets bigger, legs develop, the tail disappears, head form etc.


However today I was adjusting a few rocks (the lining wraps around timber poles, with and extra strip of lining between the top layer of rocks and the main lining, makes a few flaps here and there), anyway I disturbed a desert-camo coloured frog which shot off into the middle of the pond, then I see what looks like a perfectly formed tiny dark coloured frog, this whole frog was smaller than the ‘abdomen’ section of my medium-ish tadpoles, I looked under the flap, a whole bunch of them were there and they scattered, then the (I assume) parent frog actually swam back and confronted me, I reached down and touched it’s nose but it stood it’s..erm, water. These frogs had no tail, no tadpole features at all, back legs already formed etc., just a chubbier version of a developed frog, in a tiny scale, like most species babies.


As I carefully put things back as they were, I thought...”That’s not how it works is it?