Staffylovers wildlife pond

[Staffylover]

Not sure how many developments there will be to this as it's very small but thought it would be better on it's own thread,
I had this pond dug last year here it is last spring just after it was finished



This was how it looked after adding some plants later on in the year,

[Staffylover]

Last weekend was the first chance I had this year to look at it, it's a mess plants have fallen over, algae has gone mad and took over much of the space, it will have to be sorted soon, but then I was chuffed to realize there was some newly laid frogspawn I have seen (unearthed) toads in the garden but never a frog nor have I seen any in the pond, hope they don't get frozen in the bad weather that is forecast, will post some more pics when I manage to tidy it up a bit.

[PaulVerrall]

Jeremy Clarkson calls it "wilding" looks like you've created a nature reserve!!

[Staffylover]

Hahaha yes well I could call it that and then just ignore it, which is tempting, but expect I will clean it out at some time, we got the forecast bad weather, covering of snow and -1 this morning, so hope they are ok, surprised the birds haven't eaten any, get a good number of garden birds use the pond for bathing even if it's been raining loads they still use it.

[Staffylover]

Well pond is still a mess, frogspawn has turned into wrigglers so don't want to clear it out yet, the buttercup type plants have come into flower so at least they are doing ok

[fr499y]

Lovely

[Staffylover]

Well my tadpole situation has been resolved, this greedy beggar has turned up and ate them all, look at it's fat belly! More to the point, can I hope now it's got nice and fat it will move on so I can clean the pond out, or might it stick around ALL summer? lovely looking creature though

[Staffylover]

Been a while since I had time to update my threads, got the pond cleared out a few weeks ago around end of May since I couldn't see any tadpoles, scooped all the blanket weed off the top and repotted all the better looking plants, the bottom third is full up with silt but there is a lot of bug life going on so I didn't want to disturb it all, and not just bugs found 2 adult frogs, one of them quite big, plenty of smaller tadpoles still left they are using the pebbles and the silt to hide in,



clean pond (this did not last long)



Fantastic frog.

[PaulVerrall]

Looks good, frog is having a nice time!

[Staffylover]

As to the newts, they were very active and I think there are 5 altogether, olive - brown ones (females) and spotted males, google tells me they are called smooth newts, they were not concerned by all the disturbance so it was lovely to be able to watch them, they have now gone really quiet again so it turns out all the chasing was breeding behavior, I soon saw some eggs, managed a couple of short video's which I will link below