One night this week we had permission to visit the Queen Mother’s pond at Walmer Castle after dark to see if we could photograph the toads that are known to breed there.

Once it got completely dark, it was very pleasing to find about six pairs of common toads, Bufo bufo, as well as a further five toads on their own:

These Walmer Castle toads certainly looked a very different colour to the toad that has been overwintering under some corrugated iron in the wood for the last two years:

There were also a few single male frogs in the Queen Mother’s pond, but they were all on their own and we didn’t see any frog spawn:

And there were some newts as well. Since Walmer Castle is outside the known range of palmate newts, these are most probably smooth newts:

When the Queen Mother’s pond was built back in 1997, no provision was made for wildlife to exit the water. These days English Heritage has added a ramp for this purpose:

Elsewhere in the Castle grounds, there is a very different kind of pond – a shallow and ephemeral pool in a wet meadow.

On another dark night we visited this pool with torches to see if there were toads there too. There weren’t any toads but there was more frog spawn than I’d ever seen before:

This pond does often dry up completely in the summer so I hope that this year there is sufficient time for the tadpoles to develop before this happens. I sent the photos of the frog spawn to the Kent county recorder for reptiles and amphibians who reassured me that frogs have evolved to breed in shallow waterbodies that dry up during the summer, and they can change their developmental rate to emerge more quickly if need be. Toads can’t do this and so will always choose a deeper pond to breed in. Frogs are successful some years but fail in others – but when they are successful they are often very successful and so it balances out over time. 

It was really nice to see the Walmer Castle toads happily breeding so close to the meadows. We only very occasionally see toads here though. They are creatures of habit and, although they can cover distances of up to two kilometres, they will tend use the same migration routes back to the breeding pond in which they hatched every year.

Our most memorable encounter with toads was in the shadow of Stac Pollaidh in the northwest Highlands of Scotland at the end of April 2018:

What had caught our eyes there were lots of toad balls in the shallow waters of the loch as male toads all piled on top of arriving females:

It was quite a mesmerising sight.

The recent poor weather has meant that there haven’t been many interesting trail camera photos for several weeks, but finally there are a few this week. A badger emerging up by day into the meadows:

The sett entrance on the steep cliff has also been seeing a lot of badger activity:

But as well as the badgers, there are a lot of rat comings and goings from this burrow, and I think there must be a family of rats down there too. I’m not sure how that can work though:

The magpies are building this year’s nest and are carrying sticks around. Sometimes the stick is a large one:

..and sometimes it’s so tiny that it’s surely not worth bothering with:

For quite a while now, we have only been seeing one particular kestrel hunting in the meadows, and here she is again taking a bath:

Blackcaps have been around all winter. Using the data from bird ringing, it is now known that the blackcaps that breed here in the summer will then migrate south and spend the winter in North Africa. However, they are replaced by blackcaps that breed in Central Europe and fly across to the UK in the autumn to spend the winter with us:

The small weasel is still going to and fro across this gate:

I think that this jet black jelly fungus is the intriguingly-named Warlock’s butter, Exidia nigricans, growing on a large piece of whitebeam wood.

But, for my final photos, I return once more to amphibians. When we took on the wood in 2019 there was no water there at all, other than small natural pools that collect in the centre of some of the coppice stools. We have since dug three rough-and-ready ponds, the first two of which are in the shade amongst the trees. But the third one, only built two years ago, is out in the open of the marjoram glade:

I am really pleased to report that some frogspawn has now appeared in this new pond – probably the first frogspawn to be laid in our wood for many, many years.

I’m taking this as concrete evidence that our attempts to improve biodiversity in the wood are having a positive impact and that makes me very happy indeed.