Topic: Diving beetle (Dytiscus marginalis).

[telboy]

After all the years of having a pond, I saw one yesterday for the first time and caught it in a net to have a closer look.
Jeeze - big innit!
I understand they are voracious, I wonder if that's where all my taddies went? I noticed how fast it could move so I hope my newts will be OK. Like 'waterboatmen', where do they originate from?

[Fork]

Adult water boatmen can fly..so they can they easily spread.I have them in one of my water butts.

[telboy]

I found a young (dead) blackbird in the pond today. Fell out of a very local nest I reckon. It had been well nibbled around the edges.
We don't get herons so I suspect the voracious beetle!!
It's a viscious b**ger if it is.

[Aden Roller]

As far as I know there is more than one type of diving beetle. I can remember watching them in our garden pond as a child.

The Great Diving Beetle is the largest and quite easy to recognise by the golden line around the perimeter of its body. It is a dark almost olive brown. They are large enough to catch, kill and eat small goldfish. Tadpoles are a favourite of theirs. Take care as I've always understood that they can nip us too!

I believe there is (as I think we had those in the pond too) a smaller and darker, almost black, diving beetle but I am unable to find any infromation about it on-line. If only I had kept my "I-Spy Book of Pond Creatures" - they were a brilliant series of books for children - cheap too.  ;)

[Nomspatch]

Dytiscus eh..youre doing something right then...LOL
they fly too and they are capable of giving a 'nasty' nip...
Theres loads of stuff in ponds that will chew up dead things, but dytiscus is quite capable of hunting for itself and can 'take' surprisingly large fish, up to and including its own size and possibly bigger(I am reliably informed)...