Pond Dip - January 2010

Jeremy at the garden pond blog has been receiving lots of reports of dead frogs and other pond animals resulting from the recent cold spell in the UK. I hadn't seen any dead creatures at Frog End, but our ponds are pretty deep so I decided to dip them this morning to see what I could find. I was pleased to find lots of animals happily swimming around and not a single dead creature.

Every dip with the net came back with a number of water slaters - they're definitely the most common species of animal in our ponds that can be seen with the naked eye:


Many of the nets contained water snails and quite a few had baby smooth newts. The newts seem to be doing fine despite the cold weather, probably because our ponds are quite deep and it was easy for them not to get caught in the ice. I found a few leeches and one damselfly larva, but it was very small and I may have missed others amongst all the vegetation that I pulled out. The main absences compared with when I dipped the ponds last summer were a lack of mayfly larvae and pond skaters.

The most exciting discoveries of the day were a bug and a beetle. As when I dipped the small pond in the summer I found a backswimmer, but I also found a common black diving beetle in the larger pond - a new species for Frog End.

Backswimmer in the usual upside-down position:


After a frustrating 10 minutes trying to get it to turn over in the water I resorted to taking it out of the water for a couple of seconds:


Common black diving beetle (I had a feeling my photos were going to be poor so I shot a video as well):



Unlike Jeremy I didn't find any dead dragonfly larvae, but nor did I find any live ones. Not that I'm concerned because I know that several species are breeding in the ponds and it's been difficult to find the larvae in the past - mainly due to the depth of the ponds and the large amount of vegetation they contain.

If you have a pond in the UK you can help UK charity Pond Conservation understand the effects of the cold spell by taking part in the Big Pond Thaw Survey.

Species Lists Update

The species lists for Frog End are growing longer every few days, so rather than blogging each addition I've decided to add the lists to the right hand side of the blog. So far I've only put up mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies and dragonflies, but I hope to add some other insect groups later in the year (when I've identified some more from my photographs).

This rather bedraggled garden tiger moth?? caterpillar was on the house wall yesterday:

The snow

It snowed overnight on January 5th/6th at Frog End, but I didn't get out with the camera until yesterday, by which time the lawn and ponds were covered with hundreds of little footprints... some cat, some bird and a few human where I'd gone to feed the birds





The small pond is only distinguishable by the marginal plants:

In the meadow we can build a snowman...

and pretend that he is parson Brown.
He'll say are you married, we'll say no man,
but you can do the job when you're in town
(lyrics from Winter Wonderland)



Parson Brown visited Frog End on the morning of the 6th and Ian and I got engaged :-)

Feeding the birds

Exeter appears to be one of the few places in England that hasn't yet had snow this winter, but it is still freezing cold at Frog End. The ponds have been covered in a layer of ice since before Christmas - much thicker than when they last froze in early February 2009.

During such cold weather it's vitally important to put out food and water for the birds and here in Devon farmers have been given bird food to put out to feed the rare cirl buntings.

Upon returning to Exeter at New Year I was surprised to find that our bird feeders weren't empty, but upon closer examination I found that much of the food had frozen inside the feeders. My attempts to clean them out have achieved very little. Instead I've resorted to putting food down on the brick path beside the main pond. No doubt I'll be annoyed when a million little grasses emerge in the gaps between the bricks in the Spring, but for now the arrangement seems to be suiting the birds.

2009 at Frog End - a summary

I've been looking back at the species lists I wrote for Frog End a year ago and as I'd expected 2009 wasn't a particularly great year for wildlife in the garden - not compared with 2008 at least. We had quite a warm winter followed by a very warm spring - I remember getting sun-burn in April. From May onwards (unfortunately coinciding with when my family came to visit) we had several weeks of rain followed by a really dry end of summer / early autumn (I was out watering the garden every day in September). The wet summer was quite poor for insects and we saw two fewer species of butterfly and dragonfly than in 2008. Although we saw a couple of baby slow worms and one adult the female didn't sit and sun bathe on the fence every day as she did last year (probably because there wasn't any sun to be found).

The good news is that the pond plants have become established and the ponds themselves have had many more species this year including water beetles and mayfly larvae. Our first dragonflies and damselflies emerged and the frogs spawned for the first time. My father also spotted our first hedgehog.


A squirrel drinking at the pond


Grasshopper on the house wall

We had our second thick frost last Thursday and despite rain overnight last night the frost is still thick on the ground. Both ponds have frozen over and we now have some rather ugly blue ice cream tubs sitting on the ponds leaving an air gap in the ice. The cold weather appears to have doubled the number of birds feeding in the garden and I've seen chaffinches and dunnocks for the first time at Frog End this week. We've also had a few goldfinches - a species we hadn't seen since the early summer. Most of the birds are not yet brave enough to come close to the house (there being little cover established at this end) so I have no good photographs, but all that should change in the New Year when I shall be attempting digiscoping for the first time.

I said that MOST of the birds are not yet brave enough to come close to the house. Yesterday morning a pigeon sitting on the roof presumably slipped due to the frost and fell down the chimney. Luckily Ian removed the old fireplace in the study earlier in the year and we've yet to block it up again so it was relatively easy to remove the pigeon. Of course it had to sit in my seedtrays on the windowsill before we got it out the window so now there is soil all over the christmas presents, but I'm sure my family won't mind much.


Common darter exuviae

The highlights of the year for me include our first dragonflies emerging, watching a squirrel hug a flower and dipping the ponds. Looking forward to 2010 with anticipation...

The front garden

Looking back through this blog I've noticed that it may look as if Frog End only has a back garden. In fact we have quite a large front garden. Not large compared with a house out of the city, but it is the largest front garden on our street and probably the largest I've seen in Exeter for a terraced house this size.

The reasons that I rarely blog about the front are twofold. Firstly the front has comparatively little wildlife, 95% of the houses on our street having drives or paved over front gardens. Birds can be seen passing overhead, but I can't recall seeing any actually in the front garden. Similarly I've not seen any reptiles or amphibians in the front. Insects are more frequent visitors and in the summer the front has more grasshoppers than the back garden (though I've no idea why). Secondly I have to admit that our front garden has never really been presentable enough to photograph - at least not since we started playing with it.

When we arrived the front garden was much like the back - very lumpy grass on a slope containing the odd tree stump and a single border round the edge filled with gravel and a couple of shrubs. Since then we have toyed with a number of ideas. At first I had my way and convinced Ian that it should all be flower borders (with no lawn at all). Next we decided that we had better have a drive in the hope that it would increase the value of the house and stop next door from parking in front of our house all the time. The drive seemed like a good idea as we had tonnes of gravel from the back garden to get rid of. We brought over half of that through to the front before deciding that we didn't really like it and the builder pointing out that without a solid base it would just sink with the car on top. Next we considered having someone in to put in a paved driveway, but looking at the prices and considering that we probably wouldn't bother driving the car on to the front we quickly rejected that idea. Now we are back to the original plan of flower borders and I have to say that I am relieved.

Over the last couple of years I have planted a third of the garden (the part that would not have been driveway) and began making a native hedge on the right hand side. Yesterday we finished the native hedge, added a beech hedge along the wall next to the pavement and some other native trees next to the wall on the left. Ian is currently in the middle of changing our water supply from lead to plastic piping. He has now finished digging a two-foot deep trench for the pipe from the street to the house and is starting to dig under the paving next to the house to the house wall. As soon as the new pipe is in I will have my fun, remake the path to the front gate and plant the rest of the garden.

August 2007 - just after we moved in to Frog End



April 2008



June 2008 - the real low point when the front was filled with all the junk we unearthed in the back garden before the skip arrived



9th December 2009 - Ian clearing away the gravel to prepare for the trench



18th December 2009



The new beech hedge:



Despite the big trench I still think our messy front garden looks nicer than next doors tidier, but rather blue, back garden: