. This year my greenhouse strawberries did not appear on time, and one evening I found a big frog and a heap of big, white, unripened strawberries in a pile near the outside wall. I have never seen a frog eat a strawberry (or any other fruit) and was under the belief that their main diet consisted of insects.
Diane Stauder, Avoca, Co Wicklow
Did you actually see the frog eat strawberries?
Despite the circumstantial evidence the experts stoutly maintain that frogs are carnivorous.
. While out walking in mid June at Hook Head in Co Wexford I came across dozens of hummingbird hawkmoths on the sea thrift and cow parsley. The weather was warm and sunny, and the following evening there were only a few around. Is it unusual to see them in great numbers as I had only seen a single one before?
Joy Simpson, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin
It was an inward migration of hummingbird hawkmoths from the continent and certainly unusual to see.
. IN the main pond at Bushy Park there are around 30-40 mallard ducks and twice the number of drakes, a fairly constant proportion at all times. We have noticed the same preponderance of drakes on the ponds of the Dodder. There are usually about 40-50 ducklings swimming around with their parents, but this year so far we have only seen one family of four and another of two although the parents seem to have finished nesting.
Is the duck to drake proportion normal and if so, why? And is the apparent shortage of ducklings this year universal and if so why?
Michael H Coote, Rathgar, Dublin 6
In most populations of mallards males are in the majority. More males are hatched and there is a higher rate of mortality among females at breeding time when they can be gang raped by the extra males and often drowned in the fray. The preponderance of males also contributes to low breeding success. In natural marshy areas, breeding females space themselves out in accessible feeding areas away from the makes. On park lakes and ponds they are in a confined space and so are vulnerable to male attack which can result in low breeding success and high female mortality.