pondlife

Not many people realise just how much abundant wildlife we have lurking in our ponds, I was amazed!

I was pleasantly surprised about the many different birds that visit our ponds, apart from the familiar Ducks and Swans. I have seen lots of other birds – Lapwings and Redshanks being two of the more unusual ones.
You tend to find that lots of birds gather in the smaller, more shallow ponds as they can feed on the various insects such as bugs and beetles as they can pick these up from the shallow edges. There are lots of beetles, dragonflies and water snails that live in our ponds but I researched many more insects which, some I had not heard of, such as Caddisflies, Damselflies and Water Slaters.

In some of the cleaner ponds, it is possible to see up to 40 different species of water plants and it was only after researching, I could identify what they were, after often noticing them whilst out walking but not having a clue what they were called, names such as Reed Mace, Floating Sweetgrass, Creeping Bent Grass and Water Mint.
An interesting floating leaved plant that sadly, is not as widespread these days, is a Starfruit, called this as the fruit is in the shape of a star!  Reports say that we can only see it in the Southern part of England these days, mainly in a few ponds around the Surrey and Buckinghamshire areas. It used to live in ponds all over England but due to the changes in our modern world where we find a lot of ponds do not have very clean water and basically, not as many natural, smaller ponds are to be found, it seems to be diminishing altogether.

Water Voles are one of my favourite species to live in the banks of ponds, as well as lakes, rivers and canals of course but sadly, in Britain, the Water Voles have declined rapidly over the last few decades, mainly because of the changes in the way we manage and use our land which has affected the habitat of these creatures leading to the loss of colonies.
Garden ponds however are very important as our frogs depend on them for the survival of the species, along with Toads and Newts.