As promised in my last post, ‘Wildlife Afternoon on the Reserve’ this post focuses on the amazing water stick insect that we found last Sunday. The Water Stick Insect looks remarkably like its terrestrial namesake but they are not closely related. In fact that are closely related to another fascinating pond inhabitant the water scorpion. [...]
Today we added a new pond creature to our list of animals observed through the webcams. Attached to the housing of our pond cam Paul spotted a beautiful green and rather amazing Hydra. On the screen it looks huge but it’s only about a cm in length. Paul has changed the focus of the camera [...]
Well done to Punnetts Town for sending in their observations of some fascinating behaviour of pond snails gliding around on the front of the underwater camera on pond cam and also a great close up of a stickleback. (screen shot left) Other observations from Punnetts Town included more stickleback observations in the same pond and also mallard ducks [...]
Starting in the spring, small blobs of jelly appear on the underside of many of the pond plants. These are the small egg masses of pond snails and a careful examination under a microscope may reveal the tiny snail embryos. The eggs hatch within a few days and tiny snails with almost transparent [...]
We have been seeing lots of activity though pond cam this past week. Many pond creatures are still in the pond but remain dormant in the cold winter months. However this year the winter has been relatively mild so far. We have also had a lot of natural flooding which has also included the woodland pond. [...]
We have had a very unusual winter so far, much milder than normal on many days, but also very changeable. Why do we think this is happening and what makes it so changeable? Well firstly wind has brought warmer weather from the south and the west giving us a mild winter when countries to the [...]
During a walk around the reserve yesterday I was surprised to see that a large dragonfly, possibly a faded southern hawker (it did not settle so not definite ID.) was actively flying back and forth near the Winterbourne stream. Adult dragonflies usually have a short life compared to their nymph that live beneath the surface of [...]
