Livestock

Decided to make note of when the livestock started to turn up

We now have lots of diving beetles of many sizes and assume the very tiny ones are different species from the bigger ones.
The plants went in on 2nd July 2013

3rd July

This evening we found one pond skater and quite a few black wriggly things with legs that breath through their tails and seem to be quite ferocious with things they catch. After consulting the pond life books they turned out to be diving beetle larvae. Hopefully they'll make short work of the mosquito larvae that have just had a population explosion.  I don't know if the different sizes of the beetle larvae are also different species or if they are just different ages though.

5th July

Introducing Brian.  My red great ramshorn snails arrived and have been released into my pond. Go gobble algae my beauties :-)


Meet Brian and Brian and Brian and, oh you get the idea.





6th July

Damselfly! A male Azure came and inspected the pond. This is really what the pond is all about.


Very soon a female arrived and they quickly formed a tandem pair. Here they are on the huge thistle next to the water




9th July

Nearly had a mole in the pond today. We've had one in the garden for three or four days now attempting to undermine the hibernaculum. Today he came out in the pond side, above the buried liner edge and pushed a pile of soil in. I will have to take steps to discourage its presence as I'm worried it'll go through the liner.

On a more positive note,  my F-I-L came round with a jar of ordinary pond snails. There really is a lot of algae for them to eat after all the sunshine.

Later July

I have had pond skaters and water boatmen, visits from a black tailed skimmer female and a male common darter. Damselflies have been back a few times too.


5th May 2014
Newt!!

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Please feel free to comment or question. I will be happy to help where I can