Watch: West Cork village faces frog invasion

Yellow Door Gallery shared the video to Facebook yesterday which has reached almost 2,000 views

The Yellow Door Gallery in Baltimore, West Cork, shared a video to Facebook of thousands of frogs in the family's garden pond. Photo: Richard O'Flynn

A frog takeover has occurred in a back garden pond in West Cork.

A video showing thousands of frogs in a pond was posted by popular Baltimore art gallery, The Yellow Door, run by the O’Flynn family.

However, this is not a strange thing to happen to the O’Flynn’s, as it seems to be a yearly occurrence.

Richard O’Flynn, says: “The frogs come every year but this year the numbers are bigger than ever.” 

The O'Flynn's pond in Baltimore is home to almost 5,000 frogs. Photo: Richard O'Flynn

Mr O’Flynn says the adult frogs come for a week to look for mates: “They start calling out with their croaks looking for mates and the girls come running! The pond is filled with millions of spawn within the week, as it’s about 40ft by 60ft, so not small.

“This year so far there are about 4,000-5,000 adult frogs.” 

Typically, the frogs begin to arrive at the O'Flynn's in February, but it’s unusual for them to have arrived on St Bridget’s Day: “About 20 years ago when I built the pond while building the house was the first year I got spawn from a tiny natural pond in the next field and put it in ours to see if they would take."

“This month also marks the arrival of extra ducks and heron which will pick off as many frogs as they can. But that’s nature I guess!” 

The frogs will head off to find new ponds of their own, but it won’t be long until they baby frogs have spawned and begin to wreak havoc for the O’Flynn’s again: “Normally at the start of summer, the baby frogs start coming out of the pond and heading off. This is when we have to leave the garden go wild for a few weeks or if I went in there with the lawnmower it would be a bloody carnage! They are just everywhere, but again only for a few weeks.” 

Holly (11), Maya (7), Izzy (10) swimming in Lough Hyne with their mum. Holly is known in her school to be quite the "Frog Queen." Photo: Richard O'Flynn

Richard isn’t the only frog expert in the family. He says his daughter Holly (11) has taken the title of “Frog Queen” in school: “Every year we send a small fish tank of spawn into Rath National school where we leave it till they become frogs so that the local kids can see.

“The kids change the water and feed the spawn every few days, and when they are matured frogs they are brought back to the pond to be set free.”