I wrote 600 words in the last blog. I'm aiming for 200 today. Just a dip-in-and-out nibble of wildlife gardening' a bloglet.
The first is an unashamed brag. Look what visited my pond this week.
Ok, so some of my tadpoles copped it, but there are still hundreds and hundreds of them.Amazing to think that Little Egrets didn't breed in the UK until 1996. Now, 20 years on, they are doing so well. And, as many of you will know, egrets go back right to the roots of the RSPB when thousands were being slaughtered in Europe for the hat trade. And you can see that this adult bird has 'aigrettes', the once-coveted head plumes.
I pushed myself with my pond, physically and in terms of ambitious, going larger than I'd dared before. What with the egret, and with the four bats that every dusk descend to swoop and take drinks on the wing from the pond surface, I'm feeling the effort is paying off.
But I also wanted to share a link to this wonderful blog here which is called Growing Family and is all about "all about making the most of busy family life, indoors and out". This month I'm urging everyone to get planting flowers ready for July's flush of butterflies, and I think you'll be impressed to see one young family already putting it all into action.
Darn it, that's 230 words. I'm off to look for whatever is next going to surprise me in the pond...
wow, kingfishers, grey wagtails - you have some pond there! Sounds quite big, too. Letting tap water stand before it goes in the pond appear to allow some of the chlorine to evaporate off, but not the nitrates and phosphates that are often in water. I use barley straw - personally I'm not wholly convinced, but I think part of the problem is that a small bundle or two may be fine for a small pond, but a large pond can be 100x the volume. Any way to feed rainwater in from a water butt? And have you a good population of pondsnails?