Pond life following the January freeze

[posie]

Well the Sexy Males are wearing the females down , and drowning them ! !

[Malcolm Banks]

Yes it's seems everything is joining the scramble to procreate. Skaters, backswimmers, snails all at it and of course the frogs. The today I saw two pairs of smooth newts showing coutship behaviour, at least one of the females looked gravid with eggs The pond must be awash with hormones, and pheromones! I had been reading the posts above and was disturbed by some movment on the water of my pond - two unexpected visitors



Very nice to see them on my pond (and does give the pond some sort of bone fides from duckdom) but not convinced I needed them. They swam around feeding for 20 mins or so and then situation was resolved by the attentions of my cat, but I expect they'll be back
Any definitive evidence that they eat spawn??
M

[posie]

Well Mallard are supposed to be 'surface feeders', so my guess is that they do, but it's only a guess that they eat the spawn, so not much help..........Posie

[heliart]

Here's the latest from the pond....

At least 3 pairs of frogs locked together (sadly, one other locked onto a frog corpse). Not as many as last year, and no spawn yet - but at least frog life is continuing.

The highlight though is that I've spotted a newt in there - pond is less than two years old, so I think this is really good going.

[Rashmika]

I might pop the infrared camera out tonight to see if anything is going on in the dark... I keep approaching the pond with a torch so mebbe I am scaring everything away

[Rashmika]

Well last night I saw two lovely frogs sitting in the marginal basket. I also saw something smallish move away from the light (the frogs didn't move at all). Upon closer inspection, it was a newt.

Sweet

I've started digging a second wildlife pond, and this time I'll use a liner and make sure I've got a good depth down to 40/50cm plus a nice beach slope.