Cabragh Wetlands: Waiting for a hug

“The times they are a changing.”

From “the bitter black wind that blows in from the right hand” with flurries of snow to soft incessant rain that covered Cabragh in a metre of water, from a monochrome buff brown landscape anticipated glowing technicolour, from the near silence of a winter reedbed to the stereophonic sound of birdsong that will only increase in intensity until the dawn chorus of mid- May.

The little boy on the Late Late toyshow said it all with his big hug placard and you can observe with us within your 5 Km limit the key spring moment when a big hug is the most crucial aspect of a species survival.

Managing both ponds in Cabragh has been quite challenging since open bodies of water will naturally clog up, first with reed beds and then with thickets of willow and alder before being lost forever. This has happened on the Galbertstown side of the reedbed where the open water areas of my childhood have long disappeared.

The ponds in Cabragh have been cleared on a three year rotation so we are waiting with bated breath for the great communal hug of the year – the arrival of the frogs. If you wish take part in a citizen science project entitled “Hop to it, Irish frog survey,” then Cabragh is your place.

The common frog is the only species of frog found in Ireland and is listed as an internationally important species protected under the European Union Habitats Directive and the Irish Wildlife Act. Frogs are amphibians and their bodies are well adapted to dual life. Their large eyes bulge out at the top of their heads to keep a sharp lookout for food and danger. They have an eardrum behind their eyes and their hearing is good. Nostrils in front of their eyes are used to breathe when they are on land while underwater they breathe through their skin.

The colourful patterns on the skin help to disguise it from enemies such as rats, herons and hedgehogs. They can also adapt colour to their surroundings which takes about two hours. The webbed feet are like flippers making them very strong swimmers and the hind legs are muscular giving them a great leap on land.

They make many different sounds especially in spring during the breeding season when they return to the wetland in which they were born to breed. They feed on slugs, insects, worms and spiders but do not take organisms in the water. In winter they hide in frost free refuges where they enter torpor until the following spring. They breed at this time of the year and spawn around March.

Tadpoles hatch and grow from April to May then metamorphose into froglets and leave the pond in June/July. Emergence is a gradual process initially confined to the middle of the day when the sun is at its warmest.

Frogs are fascinating but many find their coupling a little undignified. This is because they reproduce externally and this leads to a free for all among males and the male giving the female a big hug. The female devotes the early part of the year to the mass production of her eggs and she begins to become heavier and heavier. By the middle of March, she is very plump. One March night, usually about 3:00a.m., she massages her tummy and then quite suddenly ejects her entire collection of eggs in one go. Several hundred emerge and stick together in one clump-frogspawn.

In order to fertilize these eggs, the male frog must be present at that very moment and be alert. The donor male must therefore be in exactly the right place at the right time. It would be no good trying to swim over the spawn because a protective jelly surrounding the eggs quickly swells up.

Since the male cannot be quite certain when the female will lay her eggs, he clasps her around the stomach and holds on grimly. Even from maybe early January, the female is embraced in this giant hug preventing other males from getting near.
But, other males will try to unseat their rivals and claim the position. This result is plenty of ruaille buaille or as Micheál O Hehir might have said, a schemozzle, and a male could find himself embraced in a hug for weeks only to be dislodged at the last moment.

So, although frogs need hugs to reproduce, there is no love lost in the hurly burly of the spawning pond at Cabragh.

Stay safe, stay at home, stay focused.

Slán go fóill.