UNCOVERING HIDDEN MYSTERIES OF POND LIFE

By Helen Slade - Friday, October 5, 2007

The smooth newt, a welcome new visitor to the garden pond.

NATURE NOTES
OUR ‘low-maintenance’ garden has, because of the weather this summer, become a garden of no-maintenance and, consequently, rather a jungle.
Hidden beneath the vegetation is a small pond (well, a “water feature”, actually). A reduction in the greenery was necessary, so I attacked it with gusto one Saturday recently.
A few days earlier I had unwittingly disturbed a rather large frog, probably the female we had chanced on in early April, depositing a large volume of frogspawn in our pocket-handkerchief pond. We had diligently kept the water volume up during that one hot month with water from our water butt and were rewarded with large numbers of tadpoles. To our surprise, of the few that survived, some have obstinately refused to become frogs, still swimming happily about as tadpoles (I am happy to report that we do have at least two that have decided to grow up).
I wondered if this was unusual and visited the website of Natural England, http://www.naturalengland.org.uk, where I found a very helpful pamphlet entitled Amphibians in your Garden. Among a host of other helpful information, I find that it is not unusual for tadpoles not to develop and that it is possible they may continue to grow over the winter and emerge as frogs the following year. I also learned that frog tadpoles are important prey for newts.

Which might explain my other surprise. Having been fairly cavalier with the hedge trimmer, cutting back huge masses of Hottentot Fig and Osteospermum planted as ground cover, I saw movement and stopped hurriedly. The piece of earth turned out to be a small Smooth Newt (Triturus vulgaris) about 6-7cm long from nose to tail-tip. We had not seen one before in our garden and so were delighted. I moved it to a safer place, away from the area I was concentrating on, and hoped very much that I had not unwittingly hurt or killed any others.
That little pond has provided us with unending pleasure: blackbirds and wood pigeons have used it to drink and bathe (and perhaps also eaten some of the tadpoles); blue and red damselflies have flitted about and laid their eggs; and various other insects have colonised it. I have spent much time practising with my (now rather outdated) digital camera and obtaining some quite unexpectedly good photos, and even just gazing into the water to see what is going on.
Reports of successful tadpoles (or otherwise) would be welcomed by the society, as anecdotal records suggest there is currently a high failure rate, particularly in the East Wight area. Visit http://www.iwnhas.org to send details via email, or write to the society headquarters at the Coastal Visitor Centre, Ventnor PO38 1EJ.

UNCOVERING HIDDEN MYSTERIES OF POND LIFE

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