Frensham Ponds froglets query

[Hedgehoggy]

All the recent posts re frogs have stirred a childhood memory. Back in the 70s my parents used to regularly take me and my siblings for picnics and swimming at Frensham Ponds, Surrey. The highlight each year at the ponds was the hundreds upon hundreds of teeny weeny froglets hopping about in the sand and grasses around the ponds, as well as the masses that hadn’t yet left the water – swimming amongst masses of froglets is a memory I shall never forget! I remember one of the ponds in particular harboured the most froglets.

Does anybody who lives nearby, or frequents, these ponds know if this marvel still occurs today in such vast numbers as I encountered back then? If I hadn’t moved so far away, I’d be able to revisit the ponds myself!

[~T~]

I seem to remember someone on another forum saying there used to be colonies of green frogs there (I think it was there anyway).

[Putorius]

I did spend a good deal of my time in the Frensham area as a youngster. Lots of adders, a few grass snakes, sand lizards and viviparous lizards at the site. I don`t remember frogs in huge numers of metamorphosised young, but I do remember waves of literally thousands of newly metamorphosised toads every year there. It is a typical toad breeding habitat.

[Hedgehoggy]

Ooops! They must have been toads then! I was only very young and couldn’t tell the difference back then! Glad you confirmed there were thousands of them, and that I didn’t imagine such vast numbers. I haven’t seen anything like that spectacle since then and wondered if it still occurred there today, but, after googling I’ve discovered there are now toilets and a cafe on site and people in their droves visit to swim there now – when we used to go there, we hardly saw another soul about! How times change, eh.

I remember the lizards too