Our Pond last summer

We've inherited several ponds when we moved in. All are completely devoid of fish. Personally I think this is great, it means the newts, tadpoles and other wildlife benefit greatly.
Last year we went out every evening and peered into the crystal clear water to admire the newts, followed by lots of baby newts. Much better than some shop bought fat goldfish!

I bought some water forget-me-not as apparently newts like to use this to lay their eggs. Hopefully this year we'll have a bumper crop!

One rather shocking visitor we had towards the end of last summer was a grass snake who had bitten off more than he could hoist out of the water. (apologies now for the rather graphic pic!)


I think the frog escaped as there was no way the snake was going to pull him out of the water.

 

Amazing photo!

 

Agree well caught. your pic not the snake.
All snakes can dislocate their jaws to swallow large prey so unless you saw the frog escape it may have been eaten.

 

Blimey, what a picture

 

fab pic i'd love to have a pond in the garden, we don't really have the space to spare though...unless we can figure out how to hang one from the greenhouse roofah maybe some day.

 

Honeybunny... The pond in question is to the edge of a small patio. Probably only 50CM wide and 3-4M long and about a foot deep. Upon first glance it looked fairly devoid of life, I wanted to fill it in because I worried that I would fall off the patio into the pond in a drunken state whilst BBQ'ing!

So it doesn't have to be big to attract wildlife. You can get an idea of the small size of it here:

 

Excellent, always great to see Grass Snakes in the garden. Good angle for the photo as well - do you know if it managed to get the frog down in the end?

There's always the chance of them breeding as well if you have compost heaps in the garden. I cover my heaps with tarpaulin sheets, which the snakes like because they can sit and bask underneath in safety, without being disturbed by people passing nearby.

 

What an amzing picture; I couldn't agree more with you re keeping goldfish etc out of ponds, I love watching the tadpoles and newts in mine - I'll keep an eye out for hissing Sid too!