Goodness, Readers, I hope you aren’t sick of the sight of frogs yet, because this really is a bumper year as you can see from the volume of frogspawn. Someone asked me earlier how many adult frogs I was expecting from all those eggs, but the sad story is that from each blob, probably only one or two will survive to adulthood – between the dragonfly larvae and other insects that prey on the tadpoles and developing eggs, plus the other dangers that are inherent in being a small, defenceless animal with literally no way of protecting yourself, most will never get out of the pond. On the other hand, if they all did survive I would end up waste-deep in froggies, so maybe nature knows best.

They are all croaking away, but there’s too much background noise to hear them, sadly. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

And in a few short days most of the adults will have disappeared, and then the eggs will hatch. This time really is a marker of spring for me, along with the clocks going forward for us in the UK on Saturday. The days are getting longer, and I couldn’t be more delighted.