It’s a long drag up the rutted lane from Ninebanks to Ouston Fell but, with sun clearing through the mist, it feels good to be up early and out walking. Peewits cry overhead, flying over the track on rounded wings, swooping and tumbling in exuberant displays. Among the flock a few curlews glide, uttering the double note that inspired their name, before erupting in full-throated bubbling. Larks rise up from the tufty hillside to trill with musical notes; we strain to spot them against sky and cloud. The moor is boggy after rain. We jump puddles and ditches, or flatten clumps of field rush to make mats to walk on. Spongy sphagnum mosses shine in vivid mounds of ruby and emerald. They can hold many times their own weight in water, slowing the flow and reducing flooding. Where a narrow sike runs down, several fist-sized white blobs stand out against the moorland green. I prod one and it feels gelatinous, like a congealed lump of wallpaper paste. It rocks and wobbles under my fingers, an alien strangeness in this barren landscape. No wonder people thought it fell from meteors and called it star jelly. The clue to its actual source is sticking out from one of the white lumps. A bloated frog, stomach stretched into a mottled ball, legs shrunken and mummified, fine pointed toes on an elongated foot. This was a female frog, spewed out by a predator – perhaps the buzzard I’d heard calling earlier. If the mucus of a frog’s spawn swells in the predator’s stomach, it may be regurgitated, expanding further on contact with the rain and the wet ground. A second frog lies close by. It’s not surprising that myths and stories surround this weird and rare substance. In the 14th century, the English physician John of Gaddesden named it stella terrae, “a certain mucilaginous substance lying upon the earth”. Even now, the internet is full of theories – and it does feel otherworldly. I had read about star jelly but this was the first time I’d encountered it. Without seeing the dead frogs, it might have been easy to imagine that it came from some mysterious place.