Frogs in the pond

A couple of days ago, I published a post about the little pond out behind our back gate. I mentioned that it is inhabited by fish, frogs, and toads. The frogs and toads seem to be seasonal, not permanent, residents.

    
The Wikipedia article about frogs says that they have two main types of reproduction, "prolonged" and "explosive"... Among explosive breeders, "...adult frogs at certain times of year assemble at a pond, lake or stream to breed. Many frogs return to the bodies of water in which they developed as larvae. This often results in annual migrations involving thousands of individuals... mature adult frogs arrive at breeding sites in response to certain trigger factors such as rainfall occurring in an arid area. In these frogs, mating and spawning take place promptly and the speed of larval growth is rapid in order to make use of the ephemeral pools before they dry up."

    
I don't know for sure what kind of breeders these frogs are, but they are obviously grenouilles vertes of some kind. I have to wonder if they are the frogs whose legs are a culinary delicacy. I took these four photos in the month of May (the first three in 2018 and the last in 2006), so that must be when they gather. I wish I could observe the hundreds or thousands of frogs migrating through the vineyard, headed back to their pond. They must migrate overnight, because I've never seen a frog in the vineyard. However, toads are a different story...