Over the last couple of weeks I have been seeing tons of bullfrog tadpoles in the shallow water along the river. Last weekend, I found two that had emerged from the water and were resting on some rocks. When the bullfrog tadpole starts its metamorphosis to become a frog and transition to land it briefly stops eating. Its guts are reforming and transitioning from eating a plant based to diet to one for eating animals. During this stage, it will absorb its tail for energy and nutrients in order to complete this stage of development. Depending on the environment, I read that bullfrog tadpoles will spend from one to three years as tadpoles. The Coast Fork of the Willamette river running through the arboretum seems like optimal habitat for bullfrogs. I often see tons of bullfrog tadpoles in the river and there are always heaps of bullfrogs in the wetlands. You can always see them from the Vern Adkison bridge in the wetlands in the summer. So I imagine an egg laid this summer will hatch into a tadpole, overwinter, and metamorphosis into a bullfrog towards the end of the following summer.
