When I went to have a look this is what we found.
Tadpoles! Thousands of them!
Our ditch fills up with water whenever we get a good rain, this year its had water in it all summer almost!
I made a phone call to one of the Species at Risk Biologists in Medicine Hat and told him about our find, his thoughts were that they may be Prairie Spade-Foot Toads, he said the females burrow into the ground and only come out after a good thunderstorm to lay their eggs; this may only occur every 2-3 years!
Since we figured it would eventually dry up and the tadpoles would die we decided to relocate them to Bullshead Creek, which flows just below us in the valley. I hauled two and a half of these pails down there and dumped them in. We left a few in our ditch which Carolyn kept water in when it wasn't raining.
Last week when I was home we discovered a few of these guys jumping around, survivors that we left behind in the ditch. Its a Northern Leopard Frog, another endangered species! The weird thing is they normally lay their eggs in the spring.
The kids had a hoot trying to catch these fast little frogs, we only had 3 that stayed behind but when we went down to the creek there was hundreds of them hopping around. According to some literature I read only 10% survive from tadpoles to frogs, I think we upped that percentage considerably by moving them when we did!
I checked yesterday and it appears Bob, Tad and Tannis have since moved on!
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