New Creature Discovered - Drone Fly

Yesterday the kids were busy pond dipping and my daughter suddenley shouted me over to look at a creature they had never seen before. Kids being kids, you often get asked to look at something barely worth the effort. But on this occasion, what they had found immediately grabbed my attention. Even though we only completed the pond a matter of weeks ago, we already have a varied amount of pond species, but nothing like the one found by my daughter.

If I had to describe it, I would say it resembled a caterpillar with a long pointed tail. So with photos taken, I headed back into the house to jump onto the interent to do a bit a research. I have found a really good pond creature identification website, called Microscopy UK, which I have found very usefull in the identification of the more uncommon creatures in our wildlife pond. The site, breaks down the different creature categories into seperate sections making it much easier to discover what you have in your pond.

Here are a few photos of the creature in question : At first glance I assumed the creature to be a type of worm, but by using the Microscopy-UK.org.uk site identification kit, I used the different category diagrams and descriptions to eliminate worm from my query. It turned out that the creature was a type of fly larva aptley named the rat-tailed maggot. Which would then grow into a Eristalis tenax, or simply and much easier to remember, a Drone Fly. The Drone fly is a type of European Hoverfly and thinking back we have all noticed several hover flies spending a lot of time around the pond, sun bathing on the rocks and walking around on the lilly pads.

It will be interesting to see how this new addition develops and is a welcome visitor to our wildlife pond. The pond is becoming a real attraction for the kids (And myself) and is a great way for them to learn about nature. I am already confident that if we went on a walk in a local park and found a pond, they would be able to identify a number of different species. Well the pond is going from strength to strength and we look forward to making new discoveries, so watch this space...

A Mystery Visitor To Our Pond - What type of fish is this ?

About 3-4 days ago I was sat on the edge of our wildlife pond, just gazing into the water at the vast array of creatures that have already decided to make our pond their home. And I caught a glimpse of something about 2cm long, that seemed to move like nothing else in the pond. I could only assume that it was either a newt or a small fish. Now I can understand that the newt could have walked over to our pond, but how on earth would a fish get here.

After a few days searching, I was eventually lucky enough to witness the mystery creature, as it swam close to the edge of the pond, just below the surface. And to my amazement, it was indeed a small fish. I wanted to surprise the kids as I knew they would be really excited. So I decided to try and capture the little fish on video. This proved more difficult than I thought and initially I just got video footage of a collection of other creatures, resident in our pond. But eventually, when the fish decided to keep still for more than a few seconds, I did manage to film it.

Here is the short video I put together, demonstrating what has already captured our interest and made the addition of our wildlife pond so worthwhile... Enjoy

We have already received a lot of feedback about the identification for some of our pond creatures, including mosquito larvae, minnow and grass carp. If you are able to add further suggestions, please do so in the comments box below, as we would be very interested to hear what you think.

Adding Rocks And Plants

After about a week, the fly larvae were doing well and a snail appeared, working its way round the edges of the pond liner. I had already added a couple of small rocks and a small fern that I had found in my garden, but it was still looking a little sparce. Further rummaging around the garden turned up some additional plants, like wild strawberry and moss. Plus a visit to my Mum and Dad's where I scrounged a variegated ivy, heather and couple of other little plants. One of which was a nice trailing plant, with a yellow flower, that they had around their pond.

I placed the majority of these plants on the perimeter of the pond liner directly into the soil, then covered over with the pea gravel. And a few required me to cut the pond liner (Well above the water line of course), so as to insert the plant roots into the soil beneath the liner. Again covering over with the pea gravel. Although still quite small, once these plants matured they would start to fill up more space around the pond, creating havens for spiders and other insects, whilst also providing shelter for the pond.

I also managed to locate some extra rocks of varying shapes and sizes, which I placed around the pond to cover up some of the rubber liner, making it look more natural. I still have a bit to go with the rocks, but will add more as I source them. I will no doubt move the rocks around, as I get more, making it look as natural as possible and creating little nooks and crannies for more plants and places for the insects and amphibians to explore or hide.

One of the only plants we purchased was the deep red water lilly (Nymphaea leydekeri Fulgens). And our local pond specialist, Claremont Aquatics commented that it already had a flower forming. Well the flower has now opened up, looks great in the middle of the pond and is already attracting hover flies. Its great watching the new red leaves (lilly pads) form under the water, which then work their way to surface.

Shortly after adding the plants, we started to notice the arrival of more insects like ants, spiders and beetles. This will be great, if and when, we ever get a frog visiting our pond. The kids are also spending time now pond dipping with a small net and a white bowl, which allows us to have a closer look at what is in our pond.

Its amazing how small some of the creatures are, which we would never had known were in there had we not pond dipped. We have already started to notice some very tiny green specs that seem to swim around at fairly high speed. Along with varying species of wiggly things, which I have since learnt are collectively known as "wigglies".

Lets Build Ourselves A Wildlife Pond

For many years now I have always wanted a pond in my garden. But due to very young children or non-suitable gardens, have never had the opportunity to build one. But that has now all changed, as our children are now at an age where they appreciate nature, are safe around water and also the garden we are lucky enough to have now is crying out for a small pond. After building our new patio it became apparant that we had an area of redundant garden space that we were unsure what to do with. It was suggested that we incorporate a small pond to attract more wildlife to our garden and so the project was born.

We decided on a simple wildlife pond as we didn't want the expense and hassle of installing pumps, filters, pipes and associated electrics. This has since turned out to be a great decision as we now all love our simple wildlife pond.

After doing some research about "Making Ponds For Wildlife", I set to work digging and shaping the hole for the pond, which was no more than 30cm deep and included several shallow areas, which are great for frog spawn and other creatures. I then lined the walls of the hole with sand and speacial underlay, ready for the rubber pond liner. We then added the water, along with pebbles, pea gravel, a water lilly and small dollop of pond weed from our local pond specialist Claremont Equatics, who were very helpfull in offering their advice and suggestions. The bamboo was already in the area next to the pond and looked quite nice once the pond was complete.

So, the bases of our wildlife pond was complete and looked really nice in the area of garden we had chosen, giving us something to look at whilst sat on our patio. This kids had already found that sitting on the edge of the pond was a great way to spot wildlife and were constantly calling us over, to see a new and interesting species they had discovered lurking in the pond. In a matter of days, we already had fly larvae and other insects taking up residence and there would be much more to come.