First WF eggs, home

Yesterday's bout of Wood Frog calling ended once the sun went down and the temperatures drifted back below 40. As is always true, the Spring Peepers kept up their end of the chorus until the chill edged towards the freezing mark and they too went silent. I was tempted to revisit the vernal in the dark to see if anything in the breeding department had taken place, but I guessed that it was still too early, so I stayed home and tended the wood stove. Turns out I guessed wrong. Wood Frogs are on a tight procreation deadline and when I made an early morning run to the pond, I discovered, in the beginnings of a communal nursery on the northern edge of the vernal, the first evidence of eggs. The cluster at the top of the image is very fresh—the salt-and-pepper appearance and relatively small size is a giveaway. In short order, the whiteness will disappear and the eggs and the protective jelly-like material surrounding them will take on water and expand in size, just like the egg mass in the bottom right of the photo. Most of the eggs have already been fertilized, so if the weather stays warm and occasionally wet, I'll soon be bearing witness to the development of tadpoles... and the next Wood Frog generation.