Bridge of poo and tall frogs

Flanders Moss NNR 

Funny goings-on at Flanders Moss today. When passing a small bridge on the west side of the moss I noticed that there were lots of poo on it. I counted 12 different ones and they were all different colours and shapes. My guess is the the creators were fox, pheasant and a mustelid of some sort: pine martin or polecat or mink. But it made me look at the bridge with different eyes. For humans it is simply a structure that we cross going from A to B and keeps our feet dry. But for wildlife it is different. Obviously they use it as an easy route to cross the stream and travel through the rhododendron but for animals poo means something. It is a signal, a message with information associated with its presence and smell, of the individual creator, about what sex they are, how old,  whether local or moving through and what they have been eating and probably much more. So the bridge is a notice board, a trunk road as well as maybe on a boundary between territories.

I like it when you get the chance to look at the landscape from the wildlife’s view. 

Further east on the moss and later when I was checking water levels I found some frog spawn on top of one of the water measuring equipment. Is there a huge frog about? Or a champion hopper? A precarious place for a coupling?

My guess is that it might have been a dining table for a predator, who ate the frog on top of the cylinder (therefore probably a bird?) but it left the frogs’ spawn which doesn’t taste very nice. Maybe? Will be keeping my eyes peeled!