Tadpole captives

Yesterday, the boys and I explored Flatrock Park, which is becoming one of our favorite close-to-home settings for little adventures. We started the day with our first mini-rock climbing since Arches.Then donned water shoes and waded in the creek, holding hands together on the slippery rock. Along the way, we observed butterflies, dragon-flies, water striders, hundreds of tadpoles, minnows, lizards, finger-nail-sized frogs, a crawdad, and a skink. We spent some time in the playground, then returned to the creekside rocks for a picnic lunch and used our empty sandwich tupperware to capture two tadpoles, which Will named Brittany and Averett.

Here are a few resources I used to sort out how to help our tadpoles survive past their initial capture in a container full of creek water:

Caring for tadpoles

Aqualand Fact Sheets on tadpoles

How to raise tadpoles

Big Brittany and little Averett are now swimming in a larger makeshift fish bowl munching on lettuce. We'd love to see them to froghood and then set them free back at the park, but we're amateur tadpole keepers, so who knows.