🇬🇧 Spawning season
Anyone living in our part of the Eifel (a German low mountain range) faces a number of challenges when looking for suitable spawning grounds:
Compared to other regions, we have relatively few bodies of standing water.
If the lakes or ponds are large enough to be found on a map, they are either privately owned and fenced off, or belong to a nature reserve that may not be entered.
The few ponds that aren’t marked on the maps first have to be found, and then they also need to be photogenic enough to allow you to take any decent photos at all, as they are often so overgrown that you can’t reach the bank, or are simply ugly, brown mud-pools.
Of course, every year you try your best all over again, no matter how unphotogenic the local conditions are. I’ve never managed it before – but this year was my year of the toads!
Thanks to the good weather and a fair bit of effort, I came across two locations where I managed to take some usable photos for the first time. Unfortunately, the search for these spots took so long that by the time I reached the last and best location, I’d probably just missed the peak of the spawning season. Three days later, it was all over: of the hundreds of toads that had been there before, only two were left bobbing around in the pond – all the others had vanished!
I would have loved to have spent more time with the little creatures – I still had a few photographic ideas in mind that I would have liked to have put into practice. Nevertheless, I am more than happy with what I’ve managed to capture this year. What’s more, my in-depth exploration of the spawning season has taught me a lot, and I intend to put that knowledge to good use next year:
I no longer need to search so hard, as I now know the two bodies of water that are of photographic interest to me. (Of course, I’ll keep an eye out for other suitable spots throughout the year!)
Once a certain time of year arrives, I will check these waters for toads at least every two days, and when the time is right, I will take some last-minute leave to spend one or two days documenting the spawning season in detail through photography.
Until then, I’ll be coming up with new ideas for photos, collecting them and trying to put them into practice at the next opportunity.
I’m already looking forward to next year – hopefully the weather will be on my side!
If the pond is a brown muddy pool and the sky is reflected in the water’s surface in brilliant blue, it makes sense to shift the colour temperature towards blue to give the image a certain atmosphere.
What's up?!
Gazing into the distance…
High-key is another way to make the brown mud disappear.
What do you do when all the toads have gone into hiding? You look for new subjects! Like this little spider, which scurried across the water on its eight little legs in search of food and took a short break on one of the many floating plant stems.
During the spawning season, toads seem oblivious to all danger. They keep leaving the pond and even follow the photographer. (One even jumped right onto the front lens!) So you can get some lovely shots even outside the water.
End of the spawning season – the beginning of new life. These spawn clumps, however, aren’t from toads, but from frogs. I didn’t spot a single one of them, though.