SPAWN

Words from CWP Director – Ross Vernon McDonald

Like most of the world over the Covid years, most of my usual filming work came to a grinding holt… However filming wildlife doesn’t have to be a grand migration of a bucket list or iconic creature, sometimes the best wildlife miracles are the ones happening on our own doorstep! So during the quiet work times and various lockdowns I spent my days at a local pond in Cornwall.

My love for freshwater aquatic wildlife began when I was a wee lad living on the flooded Somerset levels. My eyes often fixed in a local pond, studying the radical invertebrate beasties, Stickleback fish and wonderful amphibians. Aquatic macro worlds have fascinated me from the get go!

When I discovered this pond in summer of 2020 it was full of well developed tadpoles. I became determined to visit every week of the following winter/spring/summer and document their development, from the point of hatching through to fleeing the pond as tiny toadlets, and show the detail in their impressive metamorphosis.

Below are the first three episodes. These all took place before the tadpoles hatched but are the start of the story. The Newtflix episode (all about Palmate Newts) became a project in itself. All shot and edited by myself. More episodes to come!