It was a massacre I tells yer...

Introduced the tadpoles to the Golden Orfe yesterday.
Only the tadpoles who haven't yet hatched are still alive.
And the Orfe lie and wait for them.

Its how nature works.

At the other house the Orfe would hiberbate around October time, drift down to the bottom of the pond where its four feet deep and the temperature never changes even when there's ice on the top and there they would stay all winter.

Sometime in spring the frogs would awaken fromt he bottom of the pool and in a three day orgy would cover the surface of the pond with spawn - two weeks later the first tadpoles would be hatching and thrashing around at the end where all of the weeds and plants were while at the deep end the Orfe would be slowly awakening from their winter slumber and waiting for the tadpoles to get braver - the first meal since October would be fresh tadpoles and out of the thousands that hatched only one or two would develop into frogs to repeat the cycle of life and death again next year.

This year was slightly different, the frogs were a month earlier and the Orfe woke up early too, especially after being netted due to the house move. They've sat around in the temporary pond for two weeks now in just clear water, no planting, nowhere to hide, I've had to put a net over the top to protect them from herons.

Meanwhile in two builders buckets the frogspawn that I took out of the pond has been developing and when I checked it yesterday both buckets were swarming with hatched taddies - in the pond they went and with nowhere to hide the Orfe made short work of them, cruel but thats nature and I'd rather have my five year old big Orfe than a couple of thousand frogs in the pond.

I've had to rig up the water filtration stuff today as the temporary pond is getting murky after two weeks and it can't be very pleasant swimming in your own excrement - I'm going to have to start on the main pond soon, just as soon as the list of things to do inside the house has more ticks than crosses against it.