Wildlife Finds the Pond - Creating my Dream Pond

I’ve been dreaming of a pond since I was a little girl. After my first pond dipping trip with an inspirational teacher.

Reinforced in later years by watching Geoff Hamilton on Gardeners World. He was a great advocate of wildlife in your garden, and there’s no better way to encourage it, than a pond!

Like Geoff I want to garden organically, especially the food production. This means tolerating imperfections and some damage to your plants.

If you completely wipe out the undesirable wildlife, slugs, greenfly etc. then the desirable ones will have nothing to eat.

The idea is to encourage the maximum diversity of wildlife, this way you create a balance, and so shouldn’t need to turn to pesticides.

I wanted a pond for all the creatures that live, and breed in it. Frogs and dragonflies were at the top of my list.

I’d given no thought to how many visitors would come and use the drinking and bathing facilities!

2017 – Pond at last!

The newly created pond was finally filled in April 2017. Bizarrely enough as the water was going in, two ducks from the village pond turned up! This was definitely not the wildlife I was setting out to encourage!

Luckily they flew off not to return as they can make quite a mess.

The First Residents Arrive

Twenty four hours after the water went in, the pond skaters (Gerridae) arrived. This got my hopes up that everything else would follow as quickly. I was out there every day watching for signs that something else would take up residence.

Three weeks on, I was over the moon when I spotted some tiny wriggling creatures. I took a photo and searched online, only to feel rather disappointed when I discovered that we were breeding mosquito lava. Oh well it’s all part of the food chain!

Six weeks past by, and miniscule boatmen (corixa punctata) appeared with their distinctive swimming technique.

Next to arrive were pond snails, unlike garden snails these are welcome as they eat algae. It’s amazing how they arrive as if out of thin air, but most probably as eggs on the pond plants.

Nothing else took up residence that year. I was disappointed not to spot a frog, but hopefully next year! In the meantime the plants filled out nicely and it was an attractive addition to the garden.

2018 – Waiting for frogs

I waited patiently for the frogs to arrive, but to no avail. Peering almost daily into the pond.

A friend said, if I’d mentioned it earlier I could have had some frogspawn from her pond. I said, I may take you up on that next year!

But then…

One lunchtime when I was filling the watering can by the pond, I glanced leisurely into the water, and couldn’t believe my eyes!

I ran back to the house, tripping and hurting my ankle en-route. Grabbed my phone limped back, took some photos then called my husband in work. I shouted excitedly “you won’t believe it!” He said “have we won the lottery?” I said “no it’s better than that, we’ve got a newt in the pond!!!”

Nigel (as we christened him/her) gave us so much pleasure, he actually seemed to come to you and was very photogenic! It hadn’t even occurred to me that we might get newts, but it turns out that they are common around here. We even have the rare gold crested newts just a few miles away.

Towards the end of the year, an old school friend came over from Canada with her family. I was obviously telling them all about Nigel. Of course, when we had a look there was no sign of him. A little while later her son shouted, “There’s two of them” and sure enough Nigel had a friend!

I’m pleased to say, that we have had newts in the pond every year since.

Damselflies find the pond

That summer, the damselflies arrived. I had been hoping for dragonflies but hey, these were just as beautiful, just smaller.

There were a surprising amount of them, mainly red but a couple of blue ones.

2019 – Where are the frogs?

The following year when no frogs appeared, I took my friend up on her offer and had some frogspawn. This isn’t really advised as you can transfer weeds or disease, but as her pond is super clean and tidy, I took a chance.

I was like a child at Christmas, gently lowering it into the pond, then crouching every day until finally, movement. How miraculous!

I watched my little tadpoles gradually venture out to the far sides of the pond. But as the weeks went by, none of them seemed close to turning into a froglet. I checked on the internet and discovered that if there is enough food in the pond, they can stay as tadpoles for twelve months. This was devastating news!

As the year went on, I did find an odd tiny froglets around the garden, when moving things. I finally had a few frogs in my garden, it was a start!

Breeding Newts in the pond

There was no sign of Nigel the newt all year, but there was one newt living in the pond, and she looked rather pregnant!

Visitors to the Pond

In the meantime the pond was proving incredibly popular with visitors.

The birds were the most visible. Having a drink, then splashing water everywhere as they had a bath. All sizes from the fat pigeons to the little sparrows.

The other drinkers caught at the local watering hole, were hedgehogs, squirrels and of course cats.

2020 – Good year to have a pond!

To my great disappointment, there were still no returning frogs. There obviously weren’t enough survivors to come back to breed. By the end of February my friends pond was full of frogspawn. So again I resorted to having some off her, this time she gave me a much bigger tub.

March – Lockdown

As the country locked down and we were all told to, “stay at home”, due to a worldwide pandemic. Boy was I glad I had my pond and my freshly hatched tadpoles to sit and watch.

Watching the Tadpoles

With so much time on my hands, I was able to crouch every day and watch my wriggling mass turn into lots of baby frogs.

Mating Newts

There was still no sign of Nigel the newt, but this year we had three newts, it appeared to be one female with two males in regular pursuit.

Tame Damselflies

More damselflies than ever before emerged from the pond. If you put your hand out they would actually land on you. Again it was lovely to have the time to sit and watch them.

2021 – Mating in lockdown

For the first few months of 2021 we were back in lockdown, as Covid 19 threatened to overwhelm the country.

On a casual trip down to the compost bins on a mild 25th February, my eye caught movement. The pond was full of frogs mating! Four years after filling the pond, I’d got my dream, patience are a virtue!

I went and got a coat and a kneeling pad, knelt down and filmed until my phone battery ran flat. Went back to the house and got the ‘proper Sony camera’ and filmed until I was so cold, that I had to retreat back inside to thaw out.

So one positive of being in lockdown was being able to spend a couple of happy hours watching my first frog mating session!

A few days later I found a sole frog guarding the frogspawn.

Frogs move into the Greenhouse

By May I found the first of many little froglets in the greenhouse. I’ve had to have saucers of water in there all year.

There are usually at least 3 or 4, including one quite large one that lives under one of the saucers.

Newts on the move

In June I spotted just one newt in the pond, again looking a little on the fat side.

Although I have started finding tiny newts around the garden, under pieces of wood. Or anything else we have lying around. The garden feels full of life!

First Dragonfly to emerge from the pond

My husband spotted our first dragonfly. He shouted me and we stood by the pond with it flying all round us for about 10 minutes. It was super speedy, but I finally photographed it laying eggs on a plant near to the pond.