John's Ponds

[Johnny Redgate]

Had a digger in to level some ground for a polytunnel and took the opportunity to dig a couple of new ponds. I'm looking forward to them vegetating up (and will be hunting down suitable plants from my neighbours) and getting an explosion in my amphibian populations (palmate, smooth newts, frogs and toads) which previously only had the old sheep dip and a short ditch to live in. The 6 ton tracked digger and driver cost just £20/hour so the cost of digging the ponds was no more than £50.

Open pond with constant low water throughput.



Shady pond in wet hollow. Would you cut back the shading vegetation more or keep it shady for the diversity of wetland conditions?



The ponds are 120m apart separated by pasture. There is also scrub and wetland around the open pond.



John

[artdemole]

Nice to have tractor to do ponds.If you cut back on shade then you may get more algae.

[dampflippers]

If you download (or order a hard copy) of the Great Crested Newt Handbook, there is lots on "good" newt ponds.
Froglife - Great Crested Newt Handbook

I think it depends on what direction the hedge/ row of trees is in.

Also look at the NARRS habitat suitability notes for great crested newts to work out the optimal requirements.
http://www.narrs.org.uk/Documents/na...I_guidance.pdf

[Johnny Redgate]

Originally Posted by dampflippers

If you download (or order a hard copy) of the Great Crested Newt Handbook, there is lots on "good" newt ponds.
Froglife - Great Crested Newt Handbook

I think it depends on what direction the hedge/ row of trees is in.

Also look at the NARRS habitat suitability notes for great crested newts to work out the optimal requirements.
http://www.narrs.org.uk/Documents/na...I_guidance.pdf

Thanks DF. I have a pretty good idea of what makes a good amphib pond. It was more of a habitat diversity question i.e. would keeping one of the ponds semi-shaded be of enough value to a range of other species to outweigh opening it up more. The hedge is to the southeast and is mine so I could cut it back. The pond gets afternoon sun from about 1pm to late at this time of year.

[dampflippers]

Also look at the Pond Conservation Society million ponds project.
Pond Conservation | Million Ponds | Million Ponds Project
Look at the pond creation toolkit.
They advocate a series of ponds with different profiles and depths, so if you look at it that way, keep the trees as they are, and add a shallow "scrape" somewhere too.

Try not to let cattle graze all the edges.