Pond Animals

Wildlife spotting
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.

Stop the Swap!

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 pond 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.

Fish: what’s the big deal?
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 spawn) to inland waters in England and Wales. This is to minimise the chances of spreading disease.

With thanks to our Corporate Supporter BNP Paribas