Newts and stuff

[grawrc]

I scooped this little one up the other day when removing duckweed.

[Obbelix]

I had a visit on Friday afternoon from a local council environment and nature chappie.   Apparently an important population of endangered crested newt has been found in a neighbouring village and he wants to creat a corridor of sunny wildlife ponds every 500 metres or so to help them increase because where they are now requires night patrols to get breeders safely across roads  to the pond.

We have a small, boggy paddock with a stream running down one boundary and it's apparently ideal for such a pond.  Our riding school neighbours use it in summer for their retired horses and it gets no chemicals of any kind.   No fish will be allowed though that hasn't stopped them being imported as eggs on the feet of birds who visit our own pond.

I showed him our pond which is unlined for draining our garden and he got very excited.  I know we have frogs, toads and newts but not what kind.   He's going to send a team to do a survey of what's in there and another team to help do the annual clearing of galloping iris and bullrush that try and take over and maybe deepen it to keep it pondlike for longer as it can go dry by the end of a hot summer.  Doesn't harm the amphibians but we've found cooked small silver fish in bad years.  Chappy said nature has a way of balancing out predators. It's already half empty now because we've had no proper rain since mid March but the May bank holidays are coming soon and it's bound to rain then.

[1066]

sounds like an interesting project in the villages, let us know about progress 

[Obbelix]

Will do but the mills of local government grind exceedingly slow and he has to get permits for change of use for any excavation deeper than 30cms so he has to go through processes.   Apparently we should have done too when we had our pond excavated so he'll throw ours in at the same time.  It's only been there 14 years..........

We have an ex farmhouse which was surrounded by pasture on 3 sides and a tarmac tractor park at the front so I did confirm I could change it all to garden when we bought it but no-one mentioned pond rules.  Mind you, when chappy with the bulldozer came to scoop it out and smooth the remaining terrain he thought we were absolutely barking to pay someone to dig a hole for amphibians and have no plans for proper fish.

[Andy H]

proper fish would eat everything! My Koi do!

[Toadspawn]

I got rid of my fish because I wanted a wildlife pond and they ate the tadpoles. However now lots of newts, dragon fly larvae and great diving beetles but still all the tadpoles are eaten. I blamed the newts but I believe the dragonfly larvae are the major problem. I watched one of them stalking an insect sitting on the surface of the water and grabing it. Virtually nothing of any size in the pond and even toad tadpoles soon disappear. They are distasteful to newts but I have watched the dragonfly larvae eating them.