Last year, while still living in Australia, my partner and I went to northern New South Wales to visit her sister, Jo. Jo and her family live an enviable quasi-hippy existence in the rainforest. Their house is completely off the grid and powered entirely by solar panels, yet still has wifi. From their patio we watched a platypus forage in the creek below their house and I managed to find a snake and a rare bird within a day of arriving. So, it's pretty close to paradise. There aren't even all that many mosquitos!
Jo and her daughter Ava investigating the blind snake I found on their property. When I arrive somewhere new my first reaction is often to flip any debris I find lying around the place. Snakes, frogs and all manner of cool creepy crawly critters are to be found under them. I like to think it's an endearing character trait.
Jo and her family had set up a frog pond recently before we visited, and while we were there we heard some frogs calling from it. Excited that their frog pond was attracting its intended residents, we decided to investigate. It turns out their pond had not just attracted frogs, but it had attracted a pair of tusked frogs (Adelotus brevis)! Tusked frogs are not very easy to find, and they're getting rarer all the time. They are listed as Near Threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. They also have weird, freaky little "tusks" that make them look like tiny, slimy vampires when they open their mouths.
A tusked frog in Jo's backyard frog pond!
What was even more exciting was not only was the male tusked frog calling, which is how they try to attract females, but he was also tending to a floating pile of foam, which means he had been successful. The foam protects hundreds of little eggs.
The tusked frog looking quite proud of his foam nest.
Over the next year, Jo sometimes sent me pictures of the tusk frog family in her frog pond. The pond turned out to be quite successful in making more of this rare species! When I was a kid I used to buy bullfrog tadpoles that were imported accidentally in shipments of goldfish for $1 and watch them develop, so I loved seeing Jo's pictures. I asked Jo's permission to post them here, which she kindly agreed to. Then I lost all the pictures during my move to Montreal (I lost the USB they were on) and she kindly sent them all to me again! So here they are, one year in the life of the tusked frog family living in Jo's backyard frog pond.
Here's the male tusked frog with that dear-in-the-headlights look. He's waiting patiently for the humans to go away so he can resume calling to attract the female. The humans are waiting patiently with their light on the frog so that they can get a picture of him calling. There are many pictures (and videos) like this one.
This is a cute picture of the Mom and Pop tusked frogs together. It's quite hard to get them both in the same shot. Their eggs are in the foam nest in the background.
This is a young tadpole, which you can tell because it is small and not very developed. Basically it looks like just a circle with a line coming out the back of it.
Here are some older tadpoles. They are not quite so black, have a more complex body shape and thicker tails.
These tadpoles are even more developed. They're much bigger and more thick-set, particularly in the tail. Most are at the stage just before they start to grow legs. They grow their back legs first, and there is one tadpole, sixth from the front, that has back legs but no front legs. The two closest to that one have gotten to the next stage; they've grown both front and back legs. At that stage they also start developing the shape and colouration of of frogs. The one in the foreground is even further along than the rest. Its legs are a little more developed and it's starting to look more like a frog with a tail than of a tadpole. There are some much younger tadpoles in the background for comparison.
Here's a better look at a tadpole that's really starting to look like a frog. At this point the tadpole's gills are being absorbed and it's lungs are forming. This is a preteen frog!
This one is not a tadpole, not yet a frog. This is the transition moment, the frog Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Its lungs are formed so it can breath air, its tail is being reabsorbed, and its legs are almost developed enough to get around on land.
And here we have a froglet, a teenager frog that looks just like a mini version of an adult. Like human teenagers, it also think's it's an adult and is ready to leave the water and hop off to find its own pond.
And off it goes! Safe travels, little frog, the world is much more dangerous than you realise. Watch out for that boot!
Jo's frog pond has been really successful, not only with the tusked frogs. It has also attracted some other frog species:
Here is a calling striped marsh frog (Limnodynastes tasmaniensis) in Jo's frog pond. The tusked frogs and the striped marsh frogs both seem to be residents of the pond, but they've divided the territory. The tusked frogs hang out near the edges of the pond, while the marsh frog occupies the middle.
Here's the striped marsh frog's foam nest. The little black dots are eggs!
The frog pond has also attracted visitors like these green tree frogs (Litoria caerulea). They spend most of their lives away from frog ponds, in trees, mailboxes and toilets, and venture to the ponds on rainy nights to breed.
Backyard ponds can be really successful, not just for entertaining kids and providing ambience and aesthetics, but also for helping species at risk from urban development. Here's a guide for converting backyard pools (which are awful) into frog ponds (which are glorious).