Toad spawn, frog spawn and plenty of tadpoles

I have been waiting so long for this time of year to come along again. It’s one of the times when you can easily blink and miss it and then you have to wait for a whole year before it comes round again.

Part of me thought that the cold weather would have ruined the chances for amphibians to successfully reproduce as most of the spawn I had seen had been destroyed by the heavy frost and snow that lasted for weeks.
Anyway since the warmer weather has been back I have seen a sudden increase in activity within ponds.

Here are some images from the last couple of days. Some of the more developed tadpoles are from a small sample of spawn that I collected before the cold weather set in.

Head on shot of a tadpole