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. [...]
There are many types of flying insects that lay their eggs in ponds and other freshwater habitats. These include mosquitos, gnats and non-biting midges. The eggs hatch and develop into free swimming, some of which we discovered during our pond dipping sessions. In fact one midge larva actually became a flying adult in one of [...]
The beautiful and spectacular dragonflies and damselflies that add a splash of colour to our ponds and ditches in the summer spend most of their lives underwater as a dull brown or greenish nymphs (larva). Why do you think that the nymphs are such a dull colour? We have many damselfly nymphs during the RLL [...]
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 some very interesting views of sticklebacks through pond cam and Heart of Reeds cam. Sticklebacks are very hardy little fish that are often found in ponds and ditches. There are two different types on the reserve, three-spined stickleback and the less common ten-spined stickle back. The three-spined stickleback is the most common species [...]
Last Friday, after Robsac School's pond dipping session, we found a small pond animal swimming around in the container which was pointed out by one of the children. We had already chosen the 10 pond creatures for the broadcast so it was not mentioned. However this fascinating pond creature is called Argulus also known as a fish louse. [...]
One of the big wildlife events of the year in the ponds and ditches is the arrival of common frogs, following their winter hibernation. Frogs spend most of their life on land, but when they awaken from hibernation they feed and then head off to the pond and ditches to mate. The frogs feed using [...]
There has not been a lot activity on the reserve during the winter months. Why do you think this might be? Animals have different ways of coping with the severe winter weather. Some animals, especially birds, stay active during the winter and we have seen this through the bird cam. A few species of bird [...]
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 [...]
