Common Frogs

Further to my last post, here is yet more evidence that spring is in the air. This mating pair of Common Frogs (Rana temporaria) were recently found in my garden. What's a little confusing is the fact that there is no pond in my garden or in my immediate neighbours' garden, with the nearest being 2 or 3 gardens away. I realise frogs do wander from ponds but my understanding was that frogs mate in water with the male fertilising the female's eggs as she releases them. This male was firmly gripping onto the female as she crawled around my garden, perhaps he was trying to steer her back to a pond :)

PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

What I also found interesting was the considerable size difference between the male and the female and also the impressive red colouring of the female.

As an aside, I took these images using my back-up body which is a Canon 60D (with a 60mm macro lens). Since I had to shoot these handheld and because the light was failing I raised the ISO to 1000 to get a high enough shutter speed for sharp images. However I was very impressed with the resultant image quality which shows relatively little sign of noise. I did get the exposure about right which certainly helps to reduce noise but in future I won't be too concerned about raising the ISO on this body in order to get sharp images.