A tiny frog blog

(Nimue)

This is the second time I’ve had a close encounter with a lot of tiny frogs. The other occasion was quite some years ago, at about this time of year. It is evidently the season where tadpoles have achieved full frog status here in the UK, but are incredibly small. The frog in this photo was about the size of my fingertip. At this point they seem to get out of the water together and head out into the world. Their major challenge will be avoiding becoming a snack for pretty much anything bigger than they are.

What was especially surprising about these tiny frogs is that we found them in a wood on the side of a hill and I have no idea where the nearest water could have been. They may have come a long way.

James spotted them on the path – he’s very good at this sort of thing. Keith got the photograph. Being tiny and brown on a shady path covered in little stones and last year’s beech leaves meant they had a lot of camouflage… which wasn’t optimal for them with us on the path. We went carefully. Hopefully they did too. 

Sometimes the wonders in life are very small, and take some spotting. This holds up well as a metaphor, alongside being true of recently emerged frogs. The devil might be in the detail, but so are a lot of other things.