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A pond will encourage all sorts of creatures into your garden:
frogs, toads and
newts
all return to ponds in early spring to lay their eggs. Depending
on what other habitats are present they may choose to forage,
shelter or overwinter in the garden.
Grass
snakes are excellent swimmers and usually hunt in water,
however encounters are often fleeting. The distinctive yellow
and black collar of the grass snake makes them easy to identify.
A healthy pond will quickly colonise with various invertebrates,
including pond snails, dragonfly larvae and water boatmen. The
pond may be visited by hungry birds like kingfishers and herons,
or thirsty mammals like foxes and hedgehogs.
Froglife advise that you do not donate your frogspawn to other
gardeners, or collect frogspawn to deposit in your own garden
pond. The advice is given to help national efforts to stop the
spread of invasive pond plants, animals and amphibian disease.
It is best to allow animals to arrive at your pond naturally and
in nearly all cases, amphibians will turn up of their own
accord, often breeding in the first year or two. Some
amphibians can travel over a kilometre or so to get to new
ponds. Likewise many invertebrates like dragonflies, water
boatmen and pond snails have surprising abilities to colonise.
The best wildlife ponds generally have no fish in them. This is
because fish can quickly dominate a pond, eating much of the
other pond life and limiting the variety of wildlife in your
pond. Their excretions can clog up the pond too, meaning the
pond requires cleaning out more regularly. Written consent and
health checks are required from the Environment Agency to move
any wild fish (or fish eggs) to inland waters in England and
Wales. This is to minimise the chances of spreading disease.
Amphibians and reptiles in your garden.
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