Pond dipping

Ponds provide an interesting window into the natural world and its processes. Its surprising how quickly wildlife finds a new pond. Working with other volunteers this summer we put in a new pond at a school in Sandwich. When we came back a week after filling the pond there were already water boatmen, diving beetles, and powder blue broad-bodied chasers were patrolling the edges with the hornet-coloured females laying eggs into the water.

Pond dipping is an even better way to see what lurks underneath and spring/summer is the best time to check out what's in your pond before animals leave or lay dormant in the winter.

Looking at my pond this summer I've observed daphnia wheel around the pond edges and mayflies, identified by their 3 feathery tails and gills along their body, grazing the algae. With the help of a magnifying glass you can spot the aptly (and rather cool) named cyclops, a small arthropod maybe wearing their eggs as what looks like a large pair of bloomers. Waterbeetles are a little illusive but occasionally come up to the surface to grab a bubble of air before heading back into the depths.

Mayfly nymph

Water beetles

Damselfly nymph

The hot sunny weather brings honeybees and wasps to drink around the flag iris and the occasional frog to cool in the water. Small flies, able to walk on the water's tension, engage in some interesting behaviours. I've seen them following and displaying their wings at other flies as well as battling it out in a wrestle match on the water's surface.

I've managed to watch a couple of newly emerged damselfly adults as they sit, for what seems a long and vulnerable time, drying and hardening their wings and body. I noticed dragonfly larvae for the first time last year and have been checking fairly regularly to see if they will emerge this year as they take 1-3 years. Their chunky appearance tells me they are either broad-bodied or four-spotted chasers and I was looking forward to seeing the adults. However, I missed one day checking and the next I saw a trio of exuvae on the flag iris; they had already gone..

Oh well maybe next year

Particularly of interest for me are the newts. Our pond is tiny but still seems to appeal to common and palmate newts. Males in their spotty breeding colours follow females and undulate their tails at them in courtship. Later on I saw their eggs attached to vegetation, followed by their feathery gilled larvae. Now they are almost ready to emerge, looking much bigger with fully developed legs but still with gills remaining. The colour and patterning surprised me, I was expecting them to look more dull, but this guy looked pretty attractive, maybe its in a stage of shedding its skin?

Top: male smooth newt, below: newt larvae at different stages

A pond is a fantastic way to have wildlife right on your doorstep as it provides a microhabitat inside your garden. If you are looking to create a wildlife pond make sure to to vegetate it with native oxygenators and marginal plants that allow nymphs to climb out. Avoid putting fish in as these will see everything else as a snack and is why amphibians use small temporary pools to breed in rather than rivers.

Free pet sketches

I made an offer last week on my DA account to sketch a few people's pets and e-mail them the finished result for free. I hadn't done any sketches in a small while so wanted to get back in the groove of drawing. Plus relatively quick sketches make a great alternative to the slow process that is oil painting.

I've since completed and e-mailed people with the finished sketches and thought I would share them with you.

So here I am working on Ollie the Jack Russell . I like to block the areas in working from dark to light so to avoid smudging the softer pencil markings. As well as sketching Ollie I have also been drawing Scully the German shepherd, and Saffy (tan) and her son Iggy, the staffies. Below are the finished sketches. I hope you like them!

Quest to see the Late-spider orchid.

I spent much of last summer traipsing around Kent looking for the native orchids we have here after being inspired by the orchids I previously saw at a visit to Park Gate Down and having to do a presentation talking about it as part of my countryside degree.

This year, unfortunately, I've been less able to do so, but decided to head out to the Wye Downs to look for the late-spider orchid, a species I missed the past year whose range is limited largely to east Kent. They superficially resemble a Bee orchid (see below) but tend to have a wider lip, a central 'H'-like marking, and the two upper petals are short, pink and triangular ranger than greenish and square-ended in the Bee.

So I decided to pay a visit to Wye & Crundale Downs, a site reputed to have around half of the UK's population. The problem is that the orchid is only around 10-40cm tall whereas the site is about 112 hectares and I had no insider knowledge of where to look - a needle in a haystack would have been easier!

So we walked around (carefully!) in a couple of areas to see if we could find anything. We also walked up to the Wye Crown which I, in my naive ignorance, assumed to made from chalk as we were surrounded by chalk downland, but was surprised (and a little dissapointed) to realise it was painted flint.

We saw the reddish tinges of horseshoe vetch, yellowwort, milkwort, soapwort, crosswort and many other fantastic chalk downland flowers. Day-flying moths proved more abundant than butterflies and shiny turquoise green beetles sat on flowerheads.

Other orchids were also present including fragrant, bee, and pyramidal orchids.. but we saw no late-spiders. Still, now I have an excuse to go back and visit next year!