The heavy rain yesterday evening and duri9ng the night left a few muddy puddles around the reserve. To us it was an inconvenience, wet feet if we did not have boots on. With the school that visited today we had to keep taking our footwear off before we went into the Linklater Pavilion because we [...]
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 [...]
We are so very sorry that two of our cameras have been down at times or shown poor visibility but we have found this year’s clarity of the water to be quite different which underlines the dynamic nature of these habitats. We have also had sealant problems with one of the camera cases and are [...]
During the school visit pond dipping sessions two schools accidentally caught fish eggs. Adult fish, such as Rudd, often lay their eggs in a clump which sticks to a rock or similar object. It looks like a few fish thought that the wooden structure beneath the pond dipping platform was a safe place to lay [...]
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 [...]
Two species of warbler return to the heart of reeds each year, the reed warbler and the white throat. REED WARBLER The reed warblers have now returned in the Heart of Reeds where they will nest. Their arrival on the reserve follows a long migration as the warblers fly to the UK from their winter [...]
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 [...]
Despite Paul's best efforts, the Heart of reeds camera's housing has sprung a bad leak and so is needing to be stripped down completely and then re-sited. It just emphasises what a great job Paul Webster has been doing over the last 16 months of the project and knowing Paul, iI am sure he will [...]
