The back legs were tiny little nubs that seemed to grow into legs. With the front legs it seemed as if we could see them wiggling around in the chest area and they just popped out as small but fully formed legs. It looked like Taddy was trying to push out an elbow for a few days before the leg appeared.

Just hanging out!

We have been so thrilled to watch the metamorphosis of Taddy and the aquarium has been the perfect setting for that.

The aquarium sits in our kitchen so we see it many times a day and have caught the changes as they happen.We have sparked the interest in friends  and family with Taddy, they all ask how the development is going.

The body shape has changed quite a bit in this last week, the eyes are starting to bulge up on the head and the colouring is changing, spots are appearing. The mouth is getting wider and taking on the frog shaped head. He still has the long tadpole tail.

Taddy is not sure how to use the front legs yet and only just getting the hang of the back ones as they have grown larger and more powerful. He loves to just float in the tank in an upright position.

Taddy & Mr. Bo-Jangles

Mr. Bo-Jangles the goldfish that lives with Taddy has recently started nudging Taddy to get him swimming around. It may not be deliberate but it sure looks it while we are watching.

We should be fine for releasing Taddy into the wild once metamorphisis is complete as spring seems to be here in our part of the world. I’m not sure how much longer we will have Taddy for as he seems to have has own time schedule and not necessarily the same as other frogs. I will let you know when Taddy the Tadpole is Taddy the Frog! Check out our Facebook page for more photos of Taddy.

We have  a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) living in our area and often see it hunting in the fields near the house. Seeing a Hawk in flight is an incredible sight. I love to stand and watch the hawk have fun with the air currents, soaring and gliding with an occasional dip to the ground. When soaring it will typically travels from 20 to 40 mph (64 km/h) and can exceed 120 mph (190 km/h) when diving.

The large barn on our property is no longer for farm use but offers a refuge for birds and rodents year round. Our free-range chickens like to use the barn so it is a regular spot to check for eggs. Yesterday morning our check turned up more than eggs!

The Red-tailed Hawk is an opportunistic feeder and a carnivore. It dines mainly on small mammals but will eat birds and reptiles. Prey varies between regions and seasons but usually centers on rodents which make up about 85% of the hawk’s diet. The Red-tailed Hawk primarily hunts from an elevated perch site, swooping down to seize prey, catching birds while flying, or pursuing prey on the ground from a low flight.

The Red-tailed Hawk was spotted  in the barn dining on an unfortunate Rock Pigeon (Columba livia) and was so intent on the meal that it didn’t seem to mind the quiet observation or a few photos being snapped. I have carried my camera on many occasions trying to get shots of the hawk as it sits on a post or tree on the laneway, but it always disappears before the lens cover is off. This opportunity was an amazing one for photos as the bird was so intent on its meal that it would not leave its perch and risk losing the meal it had worked hard to catch. The hawk was vulnerable while eating, but a risk it needed to take for it’s own survival.

This was fascinating to observe and sad at the same time. Nature has a cruel side with all the dependencies between species. The pigeon had to give up its life to help the hawk survive the cold winter ahead. This was possibly the same pigeon one of my hens had been picking (or pecking) on last week when she decided the barn wasn’t big enough for both of them.

The interdependencies of organisms is a fascinating subject and one we all try to teach our children to help them learn a respect for all things in nature. They learn that even the tiniest bug can help another organism survive. Visit The Frogger Club on our website for a printable version of the dependency web games from The Digital Field Trip to The Rainforest and The Digital Field Trip to The Wetlands to help reinforce this learning with your children or students. Check back for some video footage of this as soon as we can get it web ready.

My first thought was how late this tadpole was, it was late September already and we live in Canada!

We are a science loving family so of course we decided to take the new friends home and set up an aquarium to watch our tadpole develop. So home we went with Taddy the Tadpole and Mr. Bo-jangles the fish (yes Ella named them). I explained to Ella how Taddy would turn into a frog and that we could watch, on this note she pulled up her stool and stared into the tank and said okay I’m watching! I tried to explain how it would take longer than that for him to change.

The life cycle video in The Digital Frog ecology section gave Ella an idea of what would happen. I assumed in 5-6 weeks we would have a frog to care for.

We have been watching now for 6 weeks and there has been absolutely no change in Taddy. He swims around happily in the tank eating algae from the plants and hanging out with his fish friend. With all the environmental threats to frogs these days, we figured Taddy was a mutant tadpole who was going to stay a tadpole all his life (we only call him a boy out of habit not because we know how to sex a tadpole). I have since learnt a lot about tadpoles!

Research has shown me that tadpoles hatched late in the season will sometimes take until the following spring to metamorphosize, they like to eat cooked lettuce, and certain breeds of frogs can take 8-9 months to make the transition to frog. I have started tracking Taddy’s size to see if he is in fact making any changes Taddy is 7.5 cm long and 1.75 cm wide at his widest spot. He seems healthy and happy and boy can he dart away fast when trying to catch him for tank cleaning.

Please give me tips on successful tadpole raising if you have any and i will keep the fans of Taddy the Tadpole informed of his progress (or lack of) . Ella and I would love to know from anyone who knows about frogs what kind of frog he will become if that can be identified  from looking at him as a tadpole.

We had a canine team of three when Widgett, my Border Collie X pup, started coming to work with me. He joined Whiskey, a 12 year old German Shepherd and Dudley a one year old Golden Retriever. Whiskey was the office boss and took this job seriously (as any boss does) reminding the young guys to stay in line and out of her spot. Whiskey is the dog made “famous” in Digital Frog software, she is featured in the eyeshine section of The Digital Field to The Rainforest and, randomly on various Quit screens in the other programs. Sadly this spring Whisley’s age caught up with her and she is no longer patrolling our office and preventing the planes from landing on the property.

We run an educational software company and when customers call the office they can often hear the dogs “chatting” to us or to each other in the background. Dudley is very vocal and “talks” to his friends to get them to play. When not allowed to do as he pleases Dudley will think nothing of standing his ground and giving us his best back-talking woofs, and as with a toddler in trouble it is hard to not to laugh at his back barking.

With two pups in the office things aren’t always safe. A favorite thing to steal is the bubble wrap from the shipping department and just like kids they like to pop all the bubbles.

I spend a chunk of my day stepping over, around and on dogs! The young dogs love to lie under my desk and chair so I have run over stray ears,tails and feet on more than one occasion.

With Whiskey gone, a new dog was adopted from the local Humane Society for the Digital Frog security team. A handsome two year old Shepherd cross named Kado who now calls us his family. I can now bring my older dog Beemer (a clash with Whiskey) to work as well.

The canine team of four is a good one, one dog for notifying us to the imaginary cars driving up and the other three for reinforcements in case no one is really there!!

We have some messy moments, like when Dudley decided to go visiting the neighbors, uninvited. He had to have a swim in their pond and he likes to swim under water.I was so happy to find him up the road until I realized I would have my own Digital Field trip to the Wetlands in my car once he jumped in. Being a dog lover gave me no choice but to invite him into my car, sopping wet, covered in duck weed, algae and smelling like a swamp beast.

Some days are not as productive as others in our office; it depends what the dogs have on the agenda for the day. We laugh at the dogs everyday and some days wonder what we were ever thinking having four dogs, getting in the way causing mayhem and havoc. If you call our office and it sounds like a kennel, remember it is our dogs in the office.

My daughters were always excited about the new school year, wondering who would be in their class, did they get the teacher they hoped for and of course how would they look in the new school outfit! We all look forward to the shopping trip for new binders, pens, pencils and of course stylish new clothes. In the interest of recycling and reusing we tried not to buy everything new each year though I gave up trying to make my children reuse the markers and colored pencils from one year to the next even though they were barely used, the old ones became the home work set and the new ones went off to school. My girls loved organizing the new binders with paper and dividers and they swore every new year to stay neat and organized in their books(usually that lasted the first 2 weeks)

My daughters have very diverse interests and have chosen very different paths in school. We had a surprise from one of our daughters when she went into science at college. Science was not of any interest to her in high school and after spending her summer working for Digital Frog International testing the new versions of our science programs SciencMatrix: Cell Structure and Function and The Digital Frrog 2.5 she had her interest piqued in anatomy and biology and is now working towards a career in the science field.

Our family will be celebrating the beginning of school for many more years as only one of our four girls has graduated from post secondary education.

Frogster is a new game for children on the Vancouver Aquarium website. The idea is to lead your frog safely across the road avoiding various natural and man made threats.

The plight of the frogs and amphibians is serious and this is another way to deliver that message to children. The game will remind all of us “slightly” older folks of the original video games for Commodore 64 and Atari. The perils to avoid in Frogster are air pollution, water pollution, loss of habitat, climate change, human interference and Chytrid fungus. Frogs in the natural world are having a hard time avoiding these threats and the poor frogs in my game were no better off. The hope of this game’s introduction on the website is to draw more attention to the overwhelming decline in the amphibian population due to habitat loss and the Chytrid fungus as well as to stimulate fund raising efforts for the Year of the Frog.

(To help these efforts, Digital Frog International will be donating 5% of The Digital Frog 2.5 sales to Amphibian Ark this year.)

Spring has a smell to me, rain and new earth, with last year’s vegetation composting on the ground it adds to that rich earthy smell. Sometimes the smell can be too much, like when the local farmers spread the manure on the new spring fields!

My favorite sound is definitely the Spring Peepers. On my evening walks with the dogs I pass by a couple of wet areas and the chorus of frog chirps is unbelievable. The Peepers are the first frogs out in the spring and can be found in most of eastern North America. These amazing little guys are only .75-1.25 inches long yet they sing a mighty song. We have had great fun learning different frog calls with The Digital Frog 2.5 program. In the ecology section many frog and toad species are investigated and you can listen to and learn their calls.

To hear the distinctive call of the spring peepers, click on the player below.

I also enjoy the earthy flavor of fiddle heads found on our walks (though we usually find them after they unfurl). Now that spring is here I can feel the sun and breeze on my face as I no longer need everything covered up!

What are your favorite Spring experiences?

Add your Spring comments for a chance to win a copy of ScienceMatrix: Cell Structure and Function.

Some of you may already know about Earth Hour, I know I didn’t until my daughters told me about it. The idea started last year, with World Wildlife Fund in Australia pioneering the first Earth Hour. Almost 2.3 million Sydney residents participated‚ including more than 2,100 businesses. Just one short hour resulted in a 10% reduction on the electrical grid, saving 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of taking about 50,000 cars off the road for an hour. This year the effort is global, with six continents and as many as 20 cities participating. By all of us doing a little bit we can show that it IS possible to take action on climate change.

We are going to participate in my house because climate change is the biggest environmental threat to our planet and one of the main concerns for my family. We are already seeing its impact. Participating in Earth Hour is a simple way to show that we want to be a part of the solution and it sends a powerful message to others that, together, we can make a difference. We will do our part earlier than March 29th as I will be away at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in Boston on that date. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised by organized Earth Hour activities going on in Boston on the 29th.

Turning the lights off for one hour seems like such a small thing, but the campaign is also about awareness. I am telling all my friends and family about Earth Hour with the hope that some of them will get involved and participate and learn more about the impact we have on the earth every day.

To register yourself and your family or for more information go to the WWF Earth Hour page.

It doesn’t have to end at 9pm on March 29th. To help support our continued efforts, WWF-Canada has created The Good Life‚ a fun and interactive online community for concerned Canadians who want to stop talking about climate change and start taking action. Registrants on the site can access tips, information, and even track their personal reduction in carbon dioxide over the long term. For more information on what you can do after Earth Hour, visit www.thegoodlife.wwf.ca.

Switching off your lights for one hour is just one simple action that you can take to help make a difference; the global darkness will send a powerful message that we care about our planet. Why not make it a monthly, or weekly, event in your house?

This year, 2008 has been dedicated as the Year of The Frog not because of the Chinese Zodiac, but because of the dire situation for frogs and amphibians around the world.

After surviving for over 360 million years, frogs and other amphibians are dying the world over. We could lose as much as 1/3 to 1/2 of the known 6,000 species in our lifetime. Loss of habitat is a big threat, but Chytrid Fungi is quickly becoming the greatest threat to frogs and amphibians. A new strain of the fungi was discovered in 1999, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and it is believed this is responsible for the widespread demise or many amphibian species.

I have four children and that is not the legacy I want to leave them. They deserve a healthy world with diverse species in it.
We need to take responsibility for the destruction of habitat; frogs are like the canaries in the coal mine , they are indicators of environmental health. The destruction of this species will be a forerunner for many more to follow.

We can help through agencies like Amphibian Ark who are trying to improve public awareness of the frog’s and amphibian’s dire situation. The global conservation plan is to keep species that will go extinct in captivity until the time comes that they can be secured again in the wild.

I do feel that we are doing something at Digital Frog by offering an alternative to real frog dissection, by doing virtual dissection we are saving frogs.

I am spreading the word among my friends and family about the frog’s troubles and hope you can do the same. We all know how fast things can spread when I tell two friends, they tell two friends etc.
Locally we can help to clean up and maintain healthy ponds and wetlands for our North American frogs.

I have taught my children from a young age that looking after the whole environment, not just our small part is an important responsibility, and one that we all need to take seriously. We have enjoyed some great family times over the years helping with clean-ups in our community. I am sure your community does something similar and if not maybe that is something you and your family would like to take on in this all important Year of the Frog