life - COUNTRYSIDE, WILDLIFE & FARMING
Contributed Photo: Common Blue Damsel Flies
Life by
the pond
By Tony Ridd - [email protected]
Having a wildlife pond in your garden can probably be one of the biggest time
consumers around. Not that they take a lot of looking after, it’s just that you can
spend hours watching all the activity that goes on. Here Tony Ridd tells us what we
can expect to see, where to look and how to encourage wildlife to your pond.
I love working around ponds
and wet areas, they are alive
with activity. Frogs and toads
are relatively slow moving and
because of this they make for
good spectator viewing. Newts in
water are a little quicker but will
often oblige by sitting on a leaf
or stick, happy to be viewed for a
few minutes. Dragon and damsel
flies flit around like fighter planes
and water skaters seem to reinact every Torvill & Dean set ever
48
created, I give them a six every
time.
Just in case you didn’t know,
frogs have smooth moist skin and
move by hopping, their spawn is
laid in cauliflower like clumps and
the adults can make a lot of noise
in June and July. If you find a frog
in your garden it is almost certain
to be the ‘Common Frog’. They
can come in a variety of colours,
yellow and orange being the most
common for males but they can
be red or brown, with fully grown
females tending to be green or
even a bluish colour.
The common toad is of similar
size and comes in grey to reddish
or dark brown and green colours.
Their skin is rough and dry and
they tend to crawl rather than
jump. Their spawn is long and
stringy often tangled around pond
weed. During March and April
toads make their annual migration
to ancestral breeding grounds.
If we have a wet evening after
a dry spell it is not uncommon to
see hundreds of toads crossing
the road on their way to a pond.
I have witnessed this many times
at Brook Shute along with many
unfortunate road casualties.
The highly protected, Great
crested newt grows up to 17cm
(6 ½ inches) and is a dark brown/
black in colour. You are, however
more likely to come across the
Smooth newt at 11cm (4 inches) or
Island Life - www.isleofwight.net