In mid-March 2005 frogs began mating in the small garden pond, as they have done for the last few years. This pair, pictured below, were quietly celebrating the arrival of spring in the way that frogs do . . .

. . . when they were joined by another pair, and a lone male (see photos, right).

The lone male proceeded to try to mate also, and became rather disruptive, trying to displace the males by a variety of pushing and shoving tactics, as shown in the photos on the right. This activity was accompanied by a lot of what sounded like bad-tempered croaking. I was gardening at the time, and every now and then the peace and quiet was disturbed by frog squabbles.

Frog faces tend to look a bit glum and resigned generally, in an endearing kind of way. The faces in these photos appeared even more fed-up with it all, as three males tried to mate with two females.

The situation seemed to resolve itself after a few days, with several clumps of frogspawn as a result.

The lone frog moved from one pair to the other. Here he's making his presence felt but not actually butting in.

Here he's about to start harassing the other pair of frogs.

The two mating pairs, with the lone male on the bottom right.

Wildlife

The sequence above shows the lone frog approaching the mating pair and trying to disrupt activities. Wanting, I assume, to take the place of the mating male frog. The last photo shows the mating male frog appearing to indicate something like 'Push off, will you?'