Pondlife

[watervole]

Been spending some time pond-watching. I highly recommend a wildlife pond in
the garden to anyone feeling stressed. There's so much to see. Ours is
gradually going through phases as different things colonise it. The green algae
has all cleared now - the daphnea (water fleas) have pretty well eaten it all -
and you can see clear to the bottom.

Now, the daphnea are providing food in their turn for the damselfly larvae.
Ours seem to be a bit browner than the icon, but the distinctive tail is there.
It looks like three tiny feathers and is in fact their gills as well as an aid
to steering.

I'd been looking in the water for ages before I spotted the first one, a small
brown thing, about 1cm long camouflaged against the hessian inner liner. Once
I'd got my eye in, I could see them everywhere.

I'm still looking for dragonfly larvae as I'm pretty sure we'll have them too (I
saw the females laying eggs) but haven't spotted any yet. They look similar,
but not identical to the damselfly larvae. (a real expert could probably tell
you which of the numerous species it was, but I reckon I was doing pretty well
to recognise it at all!)

Comments

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I'll bear all that in mind. First though we need to get the garden into some sort of order to be going on with.

Thanks

Gina